


Mission Logs

by Cosmic_Biscuit



Series: All the King's Men [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Betrayal, Drama, Fluff and Angst, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Politics, War, Xenophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-07-24 20:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 40
Words: 34,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7522165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Biscuit/pseuds/Cosmic_Biscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short looks into the history of the Paladins and the relationship between Alfor and Coran. (chapters written on request at tumblr and altered according to their place in the timeline).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Mystery

Alfor. 

Was. 

_Miserable._

It just wasn’t _fair_ that he was expected to sit on this stupid uncomfortable chair while his parents talked to stupid stuffy nobles for two stupid hours. Mother and Father hadn’t even let him have homework from the tutors to study, and while he normally hated anything Jurou assigned him, he would have even taken economics practices over doing  _nothing._

“Good practice for the tedium of diplomacy,” Mother had said.

Alfor was pretty sure that was just her way of saying “If I have to suffer, then so do you.”

He groaned, trying not to be too loud about it, and thunked his head against the back of the chair in frustration. 

Then he heard a noise from down the hall that sounded like a giggle. Turning his head, he saw a flash of pale-green-edged pink disappear behind a potted plant. 

Strange… He didn’t remember any servants being ordered to this hall. 

…What if there were _spies?_  

No, he was sure spies wouldn’t be giving themselves away by _giggling._ That was even more stupid than the grown ups and their meeting.

But now he was curious. 

Cautiously eyeing the door to make sure that no one was coming, he slipped from the chair and crept down the hall to peer over the fronds of the suspicious plant. 

He was surprised to find a girl about half his size with pale skin, purple markings, and flower pink and green hair. Another child? In the castle? “Who are you?” he asked, leaning further over the plant to get a better look.

She yelped in surprise and lost her balance in her crouch, falling on her backside to peer up at him with green eyes so light they almost got lost in the whites. 

And as soon as _she_ got good look at _him_ , those eyes went huge. “Quiznak! I- I’m not supposed to talk to you!” she squeaked, stumbling to her feet and nearly tripping over her skirts in the process.

“What? Why?!” he demanded, but she was already bolting around the corner. “Hey, wait!” he yelled, giving chase.

There was an “Oof!” of collision out of sight, and when he rounded the corner, the girl had slammed into a pale redheaded boy with green markings that didn’t look much younger than him. “Hebe, what’s the-” the newcomer looked up, and then there was that strange wide-eyed reaction again. “Oh, sheraiz, we gotta go.”

“You- What is your _problem_?” Alfor snapped, patience wearing thin, but neither answered, the boy grabbing the girl by the arm and both of them crashing clumsily through a door.

When Alfor threw it open to follow-

-the hallway was empty


	2. Courtship

“Oh, come on, you love wandering the Pellu Markets.”

“I like the Pellu Markets when Mother isn’t intentionally filling them with noble girls in an attempt to set me up,” Alfor grouched as Micelle sifted through his closets. Unlike the rest of the family, he’d made attempts to make the servants comfortable enough to gossip with him, and they had paid off in dividends. 

Such as being informed when his mother was up to her tricks again.

“So just ignore them,” the maid said cheerily as she tossed a coat onto the bed for him to try. “Don’t play the game. Buy something obnoxiously expensive.”

Alfor considered that, then grinned. “She’ll be furious. Sounds like fun.”

—

Which was easier said than done. Apparently his mother had informed all the noble daughters beforehand that he would be coming, and they were making their best attempts to be ‘accommodating’.

Irritatingly so.

“May I get you something to drink?” asked a pretty copper-haired girl that he recognized as the second daughter of House Perume.

“I’m quite alright,” Alfor replied, waving her off gently and trying not to roll his eyes at her pout as he turned away.

Glories preserve him, he was going to have a  _talk_ with Mother when he got home, he thought as he ducked into a relics shop in an attempt to escape all the attention-

-and bumped into someone who was coming out.

“Oh, excuse me!” a voice said from behind an armful of Jullinaka stone.

“My apologies-” Alfor replied, reaching out to help steady it-

And peeking through the gaps were glowing green and pink eyes.

-

“Your mother’s going to spit fire if we keep meeting like this,” Illyere said as she arrived by the park fountains just outside the walls of the castle. During the day, it would have been dangerously public, but at night, the park was all but deserted, and even the soft glow of the lamps wouldn’t give them away.

“And yet I find I don’t much care,” Alfor replied, holding out the bouquet he’d brought with him. He’d spent nearly an hour talking with the florist checking to see what lunar water lilies and koubagala blossoms needed to be wrapped in to keep them alive the longest, and also- “First Kingdom make, Rechai’s reign,” he added with a proud grin when Illyere noticed the bracelet holding the bouquet closed.

“You charmer, you’ve been doing your homework,” she teased with a grin as she accepted the gift, then leaned up on her toes to kiss him.

“Well, I can’t take all the credit,” he admitted. “I had to get Archivist Michika to help me identify which king it fell under.”

“But you tried. That… means a lot,” Illyere said, expression softening in that faintly sad way that he hated. Not because it was any insult to  _him,_ but because it was so  _easy_ to make her happy, and yet so many had done the opposite.

He brushed his fingers under her chin and kissed her on the nose. “I’ll try a hundred thousand times for that pretty smile of yours,” he said, and though he did it overly dramatically to get her to laugh, he meant every word.

Slipping the bracelet from around the wrapping paper, he clasped it around her wrist, and she beamed up at him before resting her head on his shoulder, the flowers cradled between them.

And oh, he could get used to the feeling in his heart right then, family politics be damned.

-

“I swear on my mother’s wedding cuffs I didn’t add any to the food!” Chef Mornam insisted as they stared at the ingredient list. “Micelle warned me in advance to take it out, and you  _know_ I would never risk a guest’s health!”

“I believe you,” Alfor said, holding up a placating hand. And yet, there it was, glowing at them damningly.  _Someone_ had seasoned the stew he and Illyere had eaten with crushed Nyakru pearls.

Someone who would have had to have  _known_ they were poisonous to anyone with Mabarka blood.

“How is she?” he asked when Micelle entered the kitchen.

“Still feverish, still bluish, but at least the vomiting has stopped,” the head maid said, her hands clenched in her apron as she was wont to do when concerned. “Medic Ruyal says it’s a good thing she’s not full-blooded or it would have killed her.”

Alfor’s jaw clenched. “I want the kitchen’s camera records scanned.”

“Yessir. I’ll ask security.”

—

“I promise, I didn’t know it was that bad,” the maid said, twisting her skirts nervously. “I- was told-”

“Who told you?” Sarnal asked, voice dangerously gentle.

“I- I can’t- I  _can’t-”_

 _“_ You won’t be in trouble,” the old man promised. “I’ll see to that. Who told you it wouldn’t hurt her?”

The maid looked like she was about to cry. “I-…. Mmhn… I- I c- can’t- I- i-  _It was Miss Enlai!”_ she sobbed. “She said the Queen wanted her daughter to be Crown Princess, not ‘the mixblood’ and that it wouldn’t hurt her, just embarrass her, and I’m  _sorry,_ and-”

“And that’s enough,” Sarnal said. “We’ll transfer you to protect you from reprisal. Anden, if you would take our informant?”

—

“You’re absolutely sure?”

“Enlai could be lying,” Micelle said with a soft sigh. “We have no way to prove yes or no.”

“It sounds entirely within the realm of things she’d do,” Alfor muttered in disgust, rubbing his forehead. “Kark it. I’m not going to dance to her tune. If Illyere will still have me after this nightmare, we’re staying together.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“That her potential mother-in-law attempted to have her poisoned? I wasn’t intending on it.”

Micelle grinned. “Maybe you should. Might improve your chances, knowing that one.”

Alfor couldn't help the slightly goofy grin that came to his face. "She does like a challenge."


	3. Hello

“You _could_ try to look a little less like you’re being dragged to your death, darling. It’s only bodyguard selection.”

“That’s exactly the _point,_ Alfor, dearest. I can’t exactly be enthusiastic about being presented with options who were chosen specifically for the size of the energy spears up their arses.” The newly crowned princess Illyere looked away from her husband, toying with the wide sleeves of her dress as a dark shadow of discomfort crossed her eyes. “Especially not ‘the pride of the blood’. You know _exactly_ why the governors stressed that.”

Alfor’s expression softened and he reached out to take hold of her hand, squeezing it gently. “I _do_  know. And that’s why I want you to be here to help choose. I want to find someone _you’ll_ feel safe and relaxed around. Just watch the training exercises for a bit?”

Illyere stared at their joined hands, then took a deep breath. “All right, my love. I’ll give them a chance.”

He kissed her fingers and then kissed her on the forehead, grinning at the adorable way she wrinkled her nose, then pressed the button to continue the lift ride to the military training halls.

—

He had to admit though, after half an hour of observation, that Illyere had a point. The hopefuls that the military had selected to send were an exceptionally humorless lot. Even the chatter between drills was filled with stoic, blank faces, with the occasional pointed glance at his wife that made him bristle protectively.

He made a mental note that once he had taken the throne, all the governors who had arranged this were going to be sacked.

“Maybe we should-” he started to suggest, when a voice cut through the crowd they were passing.

“Glories, Nitka, you duel worse than you dance. And I’ve _been_ to the Rimak Festival; I’ve _seen_ you dance!”

Beside him, Illyere made a tiny snort of laughter, the first time she’d brightened up since they’d entered the hall. “Who was that?”

“I don’t know, let’s go see.”

The crowd of potentials parted for them -less willingly for Illyere, which only annoyed him more- and they found three pairs on the match floor, being critiqued by the youngest instructor Alfor had seen yet.

“Stop flailing like a horned kittmal lizard, Bimol, you’re trying to hit an opponent, not impress a mate!”

Illyere had to cover her mouth to keep from being heard by the soldiers at that jab, shoulders shaking a little as she muffled her giggles, and Alfor made his mind up, reaching out to grab one of the information droids that were flitting about the halls to keep tabs on everyone. “The dueling drillmaster for this floor, who is he?”

The droid beeped and twittered and tweedled for a few seconds. “Subject listing: Coran, son of castle servants Virak and Dyrelle. Former posting: Delra Nine Warband. Recent station: Opelli Waypo-”

“Delra Nine?” Illyere asked. “Wasn’t that your friend Zarkon’s warband?”

“It was,” Alfor replied. “Droid, stay here with Princess Illyere. I’m going to talk to the drillmaster.”

“Affirmative.”

—

Coran sighed and fought the urge to put his head in his hands as Pipche tripped over his own feet _again_ while trying to evade a strike from Kerrima, then noticed the prince’s approach out of the corner of his eye. “Alright, you louts, straighten up! Royalty on deck!”

“Actually, they can take a break if they like,” Alfor said, waving off the trainees. “I was hoping to talk to _you_.”

“Ah- me?” Coran asked, trying to hide his surprise. His students were making a slow show of packing away their training armor, clearly hoping to listen in, but a quick glare shooed them into getting a move on. Glancing into the hangers-on around the dueling floor, he noticed the crown prince’s new wife, cradling one of the information droids in her hands as she watched. Bodyguard selection, right. But still- “How can I be of service?” 

“Start by telling me a bit of your training process, would you? For example, I noticed that the weapons wall for the recruits is immaculate. Who did you assign to keep it?”

Coran swallowed, suddenly finding it very hard not to squirm under the prince’s even gaze. “ Well- a- actually, I do it myself. I realize it’s not exactly conventional protocol, but I prefer to evaluate my students based on their personal gear and weapons. I find that if one has no care for items they have an attachment to, they’re certainly not going to look after things that don’t matter to them.”

He felt more than a little gratified when the prince nodded approvingly. “And the drills,” Alfor said as he continued to examine the various swords, knives, and dueling batons. “You have a much lighter hand than most of the masters we’ve observed today.”

“I’ve never been very good at the traditional barking commands. Besides, I find that prods are given just as well in banter as they are in anger.”

Alfor’s mouth quirked in a faint smile. “Alright then, I just have one more question.”

“What would that be?”

The prince took down an edgeless training sanduko and dagger. “Would you mind a quick test spar?”

His mouth went dry. A royal? The _crown prince of Altea?_ Wanted to spar with  _him?_ How many high generals would kill for that kind of honor? “I- yes, sire!”

Nerves humming, he chose a pair of lahots and followed the other man out onto the floor.

The prince arming himself had apparently drawn attention, as the crowd around the floor was growing. When Coran looked back to where the princess had been standing, he frowned a little. Recruits and higher ups alike were trying to butt the woman out and not even pretending to be subtle about it. His inner protocol drive offended, he opened his mouth, when Alfor stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t.”

“Sire?”

Alfor shook his head, a mysterious little smirk on his face as he pulled back. “Just wait.”

Confused, he looked back. The princess’ eyes had narrowed to glowing little slits, before she drew herself up to her full height with an expression he could only describe as iced over carbon steel. He couldn’t hear what was said at their distance, but from the way young and old, short and tall all went deathly ashen and quickly cleared out of her way to let her back to the front of the crowd, he wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to.

Alfor was chuckling quietly as he shed his formal outer robes, and Coran fought off the little shiver of fear that went up his spine.

Both of them moved out to the middle of the dueling floor, and Alfor settled into an opening stance that Coran recognized very well from a certain old warband mate. “You’ve trained with Galra.”

“Your records said you were stationed on Delra Nine. Zarkon is an old training mate of mine.”

“Huh. Small galaxy.”

“Indeed. Illyere, darling! Would you do the honors?”

The princess raised the hand not holding the droid into the air, “Aaaaaaaand… Begin!”

His first thought was that Alfor was  _fast_. And knew how to use the different lengths of his blades well. He’d known from his time living in the castle that the royals trained for combat just as any other military member did, but experiencing that skill was something else entirely. But, determined to keep pace, he put every trick he knew to use.

Dodge, lock, lunge, parry, feint, turn, glide, remise.

“Hup.”

Both paused, blade tips leveled at each other’s throats, other blades locked below. Around them there was wild noise, but neither acknowledged it, just each other’s faint nods before they lowered their swords.

“A draw!” Illyere called the judgement.

“Well done,” Alfor said with a grin. “I haven’t had that good of a workout since Zarkon left for his hunter’s tour. Come, I have an introduction to make.”

Nerves still singing, but in a good way, Coran had to swallow back a giddy grin as he followed the prince over to the princess waiting by the edge of the dueling floor. She released the information droid to take Alfor’s hand and it floated by her shoulder, twittering cheerfully and apparently loath to leave her after getting cuddled. “Coran, may I present my wife Illyere?”

“My esteemed lady,” he said politely, and when she offered her other hand, he accepted and bowed to touch his forehead to her fingers, as was proper. Raising his head, he was surprised to see, rather than the imperious stare he was used to from most nobles, an extremely relieved smile.

“Charmed and honored, sir,” she replied with genuine gratefulness lining her voice, and he bit the inside of his cheek, remembering the severe rudeness he’d seen shown to her earlier. It seemed he was going to have to get in contact with his aunt while was here on leave and catch up with the castle gossip. 

The prince tilted his head to his princess in question and she nodded in response, a silent conversation taking place, and then Alfor smiled to him. “If you are willing, we have a job proposition for you,” Alfor said.

Coran froze.

The questions. The spar.

He could feel the tips of his ears heating a bit in embarrassment and had to will it back down. Of _course._ How could he have been so stupid as to have not seen it? 

Well, then. It seemed he would have much more time to talk to Aunt Micelle than he had thought.

 

 


	4. Princess

Another agonized scream tore out of the other room, and Coran winced as the hold on his arm dug in tighter, nearly ripping through his sleeve. “Alfor, breathe,” he managed to grit past the pain, and it eased up.

This shouldn’t have been happening so soon. Illyere wasn’t due for another two months at _least_. On the advice of her family, Alfor had summoned the same midwife that had delivered her and her siblings not long after the medics had kicked them out, and Prichel had been in there for nearly thirty hours.

It had been over twenty three since the screaming had started.

“Do you want anything to drink?”

Alfor shook his head.

“Eat?”

Another shake.

“How about passing the crown to me and becoming a hermit?”

A third shake, then Alfor blinked and finally turned to look at him, and Coran grinned. “Gotcha.” That earned him an elbow in the stomach, but Alfor did finally release the death grip on his arm and start to breathe normally again.

At least until the door opened and one of the medics, not Prichel, stepped out. “Sire?” the man asked, and Coran felt his stomach lurch a little at how much of his uniform was spattered in red.

Alfor quickly stood, expression shaken, Coran behind him. “Yes?”

“I, ah, report that both mother and baby are hale, but… but, um, you should… you should see this.”

He felt, rather than saw Alfor go rigid again before they followed the medic into an antechamber off to the side of the short crossover to Illyere’s room.

The sight that met them made his breath catch in his throat. Suspended in a protective incubation beam was a large pink orb, a small baby shape visible through its soft glow.

Alfor froze in the doorway. “That’s-”

“The princess, yes,” the medic said. “If you’ll let me have a few minutes, I’ll explain what’s going on.”

“Of- of course,” Alfor said, before turning to grab hold of Coran’s arm. “Go see how Illyere’s doing. Please?”

“Yes, sire.” He backed out of the room and slipped into the delivery hall, then paused.

Amongst the nest of medical implements and cloths and glories knew what else was a half-clothed and blood-soaked Illyere, her hair tied into a sweat-mussed bun and tears streaming down her face as she huddled on her side and Prichel tried to calm her down.

“Your majesty, you must relax, or your healing abilities won’t activa-”

“-s’all _wrong_!” Illyere sobbed, her voice hoarse from screaming. Despite how much it must have hurt to do so, she curled up smaller, claws digging deep bloody marks into her arms as she clutched at herself. “She wasn’t supposed to come out like-”

“She is perfectly _fine_ , your majesty,” Prichel soothed as she prepared a hypospray and then began petting the younger woman’s hair.

“But she’s not _Altean._ You _saw_ their faces.” Illyere hiccuped, then hissed slightly as she was injected. “As soon as word gets out, it’s going to be the same shit only _worse_ . Ooh, the queen’s a _monster_ , ooh, the queen had an _affair_ , the brat’s probably not even _royal_ -” Prichel stepped aside to drop the spray down a waste chute, and Illyere’s feverish mumbled ranting suddenly died off when she caught sight of him standing in the doorway. “Coran?”

The wide-eyed, almost childlike look of fear made his stomach cold. He knew she was suffering from a massive influx of hormones and emotions, but the idea that she would ever, _ever_ see any reason to fear _him_ hurt. “Hello, Illy. Mind if I come in?”

“You're always welcome,” Prichel answered for her, wiping her hands on her apron before waving him in. “Have a seat. Where’s his majesty?”

“With the baby.”

For a moment, that looked like it might set off a fresh flood of tears, but Prichel began petting her hair again. “I suppose you have a lot of questions.”

“Just one, really. The little princess _will_ be fine, won’t she?”

Prichel sighed. “This is not the first generation this is happened to. I suppose you already know her majesty is one-quarter Mabarka?”

“Yes, madam.”

“She and all her siblings were born in the same manner as the princess. _Not_ an ideal birth for an Altean body to handle, mind you. The fact that her mother survived was quite the miracle, not that official records considered it interesting enough to bother with.”

“Of course not,” Illyere muttered, half-asleep and all bitterness against her pillow, the spray beginning to take effect.

“All it means is that the princess will finish her prenatal growing within that external womb, rather than inside her majesty. She’ll still be born when she’s supposed to.”

“Then there’s no problem, is there?” Coran said, reaching out to pat Illyere’s hand.

Illyere made a soft moan of frustration in response, “You _know_ it’s not that simple,” she mumbled, but gripped his hand weakly, and he scooted his chair closer. Prichel began to clean up the bloody mess around them and little white droids bustled in to assist.

Illyere sniffled and held his hand tighter, and her markings began to softly pulse light, a sign her healing power had finally begun to go to work on the damage the birthing had done to her body. Coran brushed his thumb across the back of her knuckles in a soothing gesture and sighed.

He _did_ know it wasn’t that simple, and so did Alfor. He could only imagine how his majesty was handling this whole mess.

But for now, at least, their queen desperately needed to rest.

\---

Coran nervously drummed his fingers against his thigh as he tried to focus on the datapad in his lap, but it wasn’t really helping. He kept glancing over to the hoverbed where Illyere sat curled around the princess’ chamber orb, a deep, strange hum singing out of her throat as her markings pulsed with a brilliant glow.

It had been nearly nine hours since she had gone into the strange trance state.

Of _course_ this would happen while Alfor was away on diplomatic business, Coran thought with a faint snort as he tried again and failed again to try to read. The universe naturally had a deeply ironic sense of humor.

“We’re due to wait for a little while yet,” Prichel said as she passed, two assistant droids trailing behind her. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you. Doesn’t she need to eat? Or at least drink?”

“Once the princess emerges, they both will. I’ll get some food in her while she cleans little Allura up and feeds her.”

Coran nodded, then turned his attention back to the datapad, keying through assorted texts in an attempt to find _something_ to pass the time with.

He was staring at the words of some sordid offworld novel or another, not really processing the story, when a tinkling sound almost like breaking glass made him look up.

The outer ‘shell’ of the chamber orb cracked and fell away, and Illyere raised her head as the inner gel-like substance simply ‘collapsed’ in her lap, leaving her to catch a tiny wriggling baby before she fell too. “Oh,” she breathed, cradling Allura against her chest as Coran and Prichel came over. “ _Oh, look at you_ , you look _just like him_.”

Her father’s coloring, slightly shorter ears, no extra markings… Illyere gently lifted Allura up, and the princess yawned, showing off flat Altean teeth rather than her mother’s fangs, and when the baby blinked at them, it was with white and blue eyes, not glowing green and pink.

Illyere beamed, tears beginning to leak from her eyes as she nuzzled Allura nose to nose. “ _Just like him,_ ” she choked, and Coran felt concern beginning to well in his chest. " _Nobody_ can say you don’t deserve to be here.”

“She’s your daughter too,” Prichel said. “What pretty pink markings.”

“I… I guess…”

Coran leaned over her shoulder and tweaked one of little Allura’s ears, making the princess giggle. “Hey there, little sweetbug.”

Illyere’s head snapped up and she stared at him, wide-eyed. “ _Coran-_ ”

“Illy, she _is_ your daughter, too. She’s a beauty because she’s your daughter, too. She’ll grow up fine and strong and smart because she’s your daughter, too.” Coran squeezed her shoulder. “I know you’ve been put through so much, and I know you don’t want her to go through the same, but don’t let it get to the point that you start feeling like she’s better off without you.”

Illyere bit her lip, then swallowed and let out a slow breath before nuzzling Allura again. “You _are_ my little sweetbug, aren’t you?” she asked the little princess, and Allura responded by nipping her nose. “And a _hungry_ one, too,” she said with a watery laugh, scooping up some of the orb gel to let the infant slurp it down. Nursing would come later, this had to be first, Prichel had said.

“What do you say after you’re both cleaned up, we contact Alfor with the good news?” Coran offered.

Illyere smiled her first real, honest smile in months. “That sounds great.”


	5. Goodbyes

His chest hurt.

It had hurt ever since the emergency alert had begun screeching all through the halls of the castle during the third cycle of the morning, long before most of the staff should have been awake. At the time, it had been dread, a sense of urgency and panic of the unknown as he and the other military staff closest to the royal family rushed to ascertain the source and parcel of the message.

And then it had become a crushing despair when he saw the video feed of Waypoint Ullal.

Or, rather, the _crater_   where it had been.

He was still standing numbly at the comm station as the announcement began to circulate:

Queen Illyere was dead.

—

An accident, it was said. No official inquiry had been made yet - _that_ would wait until after the Starshine Wake and the Funeral March to the Stars, of course- but the story so far was that the waypoint gate had malfunctioned and overloaded.

And taken their Queen and everyone within a mile radius when it went.

It wasn’t fair.

_Glories_ , it wasn’t fair.

Coran leaned on the ceremonial spear as he stood outside the chamber where the King and Princess had been sequestered for their traditional period of mourning. Frankly, he thought they should have just been allowed to stay in one of their bedrooms, since the chamber looked like a miserable place for an already heartbroken toddler, but it wasn’t really his call to make.

His chest still hurt, and he swallowed thickly, looking down at the floor.

Illyere, gone. It was so hard to believe.

Part of him felt sickly guilty. He knew it was irrational thinking, really. If the gate explosion really _had_ been an accident, there would have been nothing he could have done if he’d been there. He would have just died as well. And she had been the one to insist he stay behind to guard Allura instead of going with her. Yet still…

Coran sighed, resting his forehead against the butt of the spear.

His Queen was gone. His _friend_ was gone. No more secret signalling about boring dignitaries, no more gossiping about castle goings-on, no-

“Rana?”

He raised his head at the familiar voice and nickname and managed a weak smile at the sight of his aunt, all hustle and bustle and swishy skirts and grey-streaked strawberry blond hair in tight little braids. “Micelle, hi. I’m sorry, but no one goes in, not even you.”

“Oh, dearheart, I wouldn’t dream of intruding on them, not now. I thought you might need something for your vigil,” she said, passing over a small box of dessert-gel pouches before going to sit on one of the benches by the door with a tired sigh.

The gift did cheer him up, just for a moment, and he picked out a olalla-berry one before setting the box behind a potted plant and turning to his aunt. “How are the wake plans going?”

“Ugh. I would be lying if I said they were going at all,” Micelle said bitterly, folding her hands over her stomach. “The politicians have descended like ivicki birds, all trying to peck at the food or steal the whole meal for themselves.”

He stopped, the pouch halfway to his mouth. “Already? But why wouldn’t they at least wait until after the funeral?” Coran asked, concerned and not a little disgusted. After all the hard work Illyere had done for the Altean trade agreements with their neighboring worlds, _this_ was the thanks the government was going to give her? Squabbling over the leftovers of her efforts before she was even put to rest? He set his jaw and stood a little straighter. “They’re not going to be bothering his majesty with this. Not any time soon.”

Micelle grinned at him affectionately. “That’s our Rana, protective as always,” she teased, then looked down at her hands. “It’s all this fluff over succession. Where Alfor and Illyere were heading the diplomatic and economic branches themselves, fights are being picked over who will handle Illyere’s duties now. Kirak is being especially vocal.”

Coran made a face. “She never would have touched him with an opelli bargepole. Her majesty always favored Miss Jocetta as a potential stand-in if she were ever to be too sick for a meeting.”

Micelle stiffened and then stared at him, eyes wide. “Rana… how do you know that?”

“Well… well, we talked work and such a lot. Nice to have someone around to listen who isn’t out to beg for favors, you know?”

She got up and grabbed him by the shoulders, looking him dead in the eye. “Did she ever make notes about it? Something that could be binding?”

Coran blinked at his aunt, then caught on to what she was implying. “I don’t- wait-… _yes!_ Yes, she did! There’s a memory crystal in the highest drawer on the left side of her desk- here you’ll need this,” he said, producing his passkey to Illyere’s office from a pocket inside his coat.

Micelle hugged him tightly before taking it. “I’ll be right back. Rana, you might have just sorted this whole mess out.”

—

The floating lights that glittered all around the procession might have been pretty under any other circumstance. But coupled with the soft singing of the ritual priestesses, they only added to the pall of melancholy that settled over the long hall.

Coran looked up at Alfor, several steps ahead with the priestesses as they lead the procession up to the rotunda where the final farewells would be made. Shoulders slumped, he walked with heavy tread, clearly exhausted. Coran couldn’t blame him. Couldn’t blame him at all.

A little sniffle by his side made him turn his attention to the nurse carrying Allura. The little princess had cried herself almost to sleep, red-rimmed eyes blinking fuzzily at the lights and people surrounding them all. She raised her head and looked up at her father's back, then whimpered and tried to squirm free from Prichel’s hold.

“No, your highness,” the nurse whispered softly, holding her charge tighter. “We have to do as the priestesses said.”

That only seemed to upset Allura more, her tiny round face scrunching up to howl.  “But I-”

Shifting his spear to the other side and not caring that it wasn’t proper protocol, Coran reached out and gave her ear a little tweak like he used to do when she was a baby in her mother's arms. “Hey, sweetbug. You can hold my hand until it’s all over. Alright? Will that help?”

Allura hiccuped and scrubbed her eyes with chubby fists, then latched on to his hand. A couple of nobles close by scowled disapprovingly, but Prichel gave him a grateful smile, shifting closer to make it easier for the princess to reach.

He’d only been to three royal farewell releases himself before, and never one that didn’t have a body to send. Seeing only Illyere’s coronation regalia floating where she should have been made a cold, painful rock sit in the pit of his stomach as they took up their positions beside Alfor. On the other side of the podium stood hooded figures that it took him a minute to recognize as Illyere’s sisters and brother. Right… they’d gone to their grandmother’s homeworld to help with diplomatic ties after Illyere had married into the royal family… It seemed the funeral customs there had not been kind to them.

“-nd it is with these blessings we give our beloved queen back to the stars from which we were birthed.”

The sparkling burst startled him back to the funeral rites; the anti-gravity beam in which Illyere’s regalia was suspended lit up as it was enveloped in a red-violet energy pulse that disintegrated the jewelry and carried the particles up into the sky. A little hand still clinging to his squeezed tightly and Coran squeezed back, tucking his spear into his arm so that he could follow suit with everyone else as they saluted their queen’s departure.

_Goodbye, Illyere._

_Goodbye, my friend._

—

Coran quietly cursed under his breath as he tapped at the keys of the comm station. Infernal relay errors and all their wretched cousins could burn in a gritka pit. Giving up on fixing it by code alone, he wrenched the tech chamber panel open and prepared himself for a long climb up to the antennas, when someone cleared their throat behind him.

“Mind if we talk for a minute?”

He looked over his shoulder and was mildly surprised to see Alfor out and about; the king had been a bit hard to find in the week since the funeral, even for him. “Of course, sire,” he said, pulling out the chair he’d been sitting in previously.

Alfor shook his head. “You don’t have to do that. I… was coming by to thank you, actually.”

“Me? For what?”

“New ministers have been appointed, trade agreements have been handled, and three budget disagreements have been stopped. Micelle tells me you’re responsible for that.”

“Oh… oh, _that_.” Coran scratched his head awkwardly. “I don’t know that I would call it _me_. I was just… I just tried to do what I thought she would have wanted.”

“I see.” Alfor did sit down at that, and Coran was acutely aware of how _tired_ he still looked. Dark circles shadowed under red eyes, and he seemed to sag in the chair as he leaned against the armrest. “Still, it’s admirable that you were able to carry out her wishes so efficiently. The nurses speak highly of you as well, and of course there are your family connections among the staff.”

“I’m not sure I’m following your train of thought, your majesty.”

Alfor looked up at him, expression unreadable. “Maybe it’s nothing. I am just… I wonder if perhaps this all could have been avoided if Illyere and I had done things differently.”

“Are you speaking of delegations? Sire, you know neither of you are the type to just sit idly by and let others make decisions.”

There was a rueful chuckle at that. “I can’t deny that. Her especially. But… Coran, I _do_ need help.” The king slowly, almost painfully got to his feet. “Illyere and I were a _team_ , even before we were rulers. I can’t _handle_ this place alone. And from what I’ve been hearing, I think you’d be the most qualified to assist me.”

Coran stepped back and put up his hands, unsure. “Wait, what exactly are we talking about here? I’m not a politician, I’m a bodyguard. I don’t want to be any kind of governor or-”

“No, no, nothing like that. It would be more of an… advisory position. You know the castle. You know the staff. You know intrigue. You knew _Illyere_. You have connections and technical skills, and you’re already my guard. This would just give you the authority to not have to play games like what happened last week.”

Coran considered that, scratching at his arm as he thought. Then finally, he held out his hand. “Alright. But only until things go back to normal around here. Then I’m back to just being the family bodyguard, deal?”

Alfor brightened and shook his hand. “Deal.”


	6. Mourning Years

Alfor sank into the padded chair with a grateful sigh and tilted his head back, the simple motion of just being able to sit down somewhere quiet seeming to take a hundred pounds of weight off his back. “You know, this is going to sound idiotic, but I’m actually surprised you don’t live in the castle.”

“Not as foolish as you think. I do have rooms… Illy- er… her late majesty’s offer,” Coran said awkwardly as he set down a tray of cups and small plates and took a seat on a couch across from him. “This place was military issue. There wouldn’t even be anything  _in_ it if the twins hadn’t insisted.”

“I’m glad they did.” Alfor accepted an offered cup and blew at the steam, trying not to think about the prick of pain that had come with the mention of Illyere. 

That had been the entire reason he’d had to flee the castle in the first place.

All those years of whispers behind her back, of insults, of looking down their noses, and now the nobles wanted to turn her death into a mourning holiday, as if they’d loved her all along. 

It made his stomach curdle.

“Sire?”

“Sorry,” Alfor muttered, realizing he’d been attempting to burn holes in the floor with his gaze. He took a sip of the sweet brew, recognizing Micelle’s recipe from years of late night of sneaking into the castle kitchen, and took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he said again, meaning it a little more.

“Don’t be,” Coran said, biting into a sandwich. “Truth be told,” he continued as he gestured with it, “-if we hadn’t left when we did, I was very close to putting Governor Purchalla on the floor myself.”

Alfor snorted, feeling a little more of the tension in his shoulders drain. “I wouldn’t have reprimanded you for it. At least not honestly,” he said, reaching for a kepru cracker.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, before Coran set his empty cup down. “ _Is_ there something you want to do when the day comes? I’ll clear the schedule.”

Alfor set his own cup down, then closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, thinking. “I’ll take Allura to Arus,” he said finally. “To throw some lunar lilies in the singing fountains. If you and those who knew her would like to take the day for yourselves, I’ll allow it. But I refuse to make an official sanction like what those ipickis are wanting.”

Coran nodded, his grin somewhat lopsided. “Just the way she would have liked it, hm?”

Alfor smiled, ignoring the way his eyes stung. “Just the way she would have liked it.”

-

“I- I’m sorry to interrupt, sire. I know we’re supposed to take her to Coran first if there’s a problem, but… we found her there again.”

Alfor politely excused himself from the conversation with the two governors and followed Turimi. “Did she throw a fit at any of the maids?”

“No, sire, she was just sleeping, it’s just… this is the second time this week. Should we… send for someone? Change her schedule somehow? None of us know what to do.”

He sighed. “Unfortunately, neither do I. Honestly, there are times I wish I could hide in there myself,” he admitted as they approached Illyere’s old office. One of the other maids was crouched beside a sleepily grumpy Allura, who was holding her stuffed Vulluna between them as if to ward the woman off. “I’ll take it from here.”

The maids both nodded and made themselves scarce, and he knelt to ruffle his daughter’s hair. “How’s my dolly?”

“Not here,” Allura mumbled in grouchy misery and he knew she wasn’t talking about herself.

“I know,” he said soothingly, scooping her up into his arms. “I wish she’d come back, too.”

An angry sniff.

Alfor held his daughter against his chest, swinging her back and forth a little in an attempt to calm her upset as he stared at the door that had been closed for nearly two years. 

Then he made up his mind, and unlocked it.

“Papa?” Allura asked at the click and swish of the door opening, then looked up from where she’d buried her head in his shoulder and made a soft gasp.

Everything was still the same. The toys Illyere had made for their daughter. The ones she hadn’t finished. Her desk. Her swisher chair. The lamps, still lit…

All of it waiting for her to come back, like them.

Alfor gave Allura a squeeze, then went and picked up one of the toys off the shelf, carrying it with them to the desk to sit down. Allura eagerly took the stuffed rhiapip, burying her face into its glittery ruff. 

“Why don’t we take the other finished ones, too?” Alfor said as he rocked them both in the swisher chair. “The unfinished ones can stay here.”

“With Mama.”

“Yes. With Mama.”

 


	7. Lullabye

Coran skidded to a halt outside of the nursery just in time to see a shrieking little blob of black fling itself out of one of the nannies’ arms and slither under a wardrobe. “What in the-”

“Oh, glories, are we glad to see you, sir,” another nurse said as she tried to collect shreds of cloth and fluff that looked like they had once been pillows. “We have no idea what happened! She was just fine all through her bath-!”

The nanny who’d suffered the worst of Allura’s tantrum winced as she touched the scratches on her face. “As soon as we tried to put her down for bed, she started screaming for her father or you, and- _this!_ ”

And Alfor was still in a sealed cabinet meeting. Coran sympathetically patted the injured nurse on the shoulder and directed the woman to the medical kit next to the changing station, then got down on his hands and knees to peer into the dark space under the wardrobe. “Allura… little sweetbug… It’s your old pal Coran…”

Glowing green eyes and bared tiny glowing green fangs greeted him from the shadows. “Prove it,” came the hissing growl, its attempt to be threatening somewhat mitigated by how squeaky it was.

Coran coughed and cleared his throat.

_“The silvery light beckons in the night_  
_The moons are calling you to play…”_

Allura immediately perked up at the sound of her most favorite lullaby, the one she had declared that he and only he could sing for her anymore, and scrambled out to be picked up. Coran rocked back on his heels and scooped her into his arms before getting up, letting her get comfortable.

Her newly re-dusty-state brought the attention of the nurses, but when their approach made her growl and form little claws to prick his clothes with, he quickly signaled them to hold off on another bath until morning.

_“-And how brightly all the stars do shine_  
_How smartly all the planets align_  
_They twinkle so and dip their rings low_  
_To guide your way to sleep.”_

With her face buried in his neck and chubby fingers coiled tightly in his hair as she finally snoozed by the end of the song, Coran knew getting Allura into her crib wasn’t going to be happening. With a fondly exasperated sigh, he settled the sleeping toddler so that she wasn't drooling down his collar  _quite_ so much and sank into one of the nurses’ swisher chairs, then started when he noticed the shadow in the doorway. “Oh, your majesty. I didn’t hear you arrive.”

“It’s quite all right,” Alfor replied, coming in to lovingly ruffle his sleeping daughter’s hair. “The meeting only concluded a few minutes ago. Heard the story from the staff on my way.” The king gave him an oddly wistful smile. “I’m glad you’re here to look after her when I cannot.”

“Yes, well, you two have had me wrapped around your little fingers since I took this job,” Coran said with a grin. But if anything, his attempt at humor only seemed to make his liege sadder as Alfor quietly pulled over a chair. “…Sire?”

“The Ballad of the Star Dance… Illyere always used to sing that to her,” Alfor said softly, sweeping a stray lock out of Allura’s face, and then Coran understood.

“The seven year anniversary is next week, isn’t it?”

“Of the waypoint gate accident, yes. But the caravan would have set out tomorrow, meaning tonight’s the anniversary of the last time she saw her mother.” Alfor scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed. “I should have thought to reschedule the damn meeting. Of course she would have been upset tonight.”

“It was a mistake, sire, that’s all. I’ll rearrange the morning duties so you two can have a nice long uninterrupted breakfast together.”

The hand on Allura’s back came up to sweep through Coran’s hair affectionately as Alfor got up, and he hoped the other man didn’t see him briefly flash pink in the dim light. “You’re a wonder. Thank you.”

“Yes, sire.”

Alfor leaned down and kissed his daughter on the cheek, making her snuffle happily in her sleep, then quietly left. Coran settled the toddler higher against his chest so she was pulling on his hair a little less, then snuggled down into the chair to get some sleep himself.

 


	8. Departure

“All these centuries and not a speck of dust on them.”

Alfor was equally impressed as his adviser and aide, reaching out to touch a paw of one of the sleeping lions with a breathless reverence. How his grandfather could have simply sealed away such magnificent creations, he didn’t know, but then, Jollar had always had his own way of doing things.

“Uncle, look here!”

“My, my, full AI directive drives. I thought those hadn’t been developed until the Third Age.”

He glanced over his shoulder, then grinned, as Coran and his uncle Rorek poured over the schematic files that had been in the control panels they’d uncovered, looking like kids opening decade day presents. “Having fun, you two?”

The pair looked up, and the brilliance of Coran’s responding smile momentarily caught him off guard. “Your majesty, you _must_ come see this!”

“Er- of course. Of course.” Shaking off the sudden catch in his breath, Alfor crossed back over the hanger and peered over his advisor’s shoulder. “Are those… _heartbeats?_ ”

“ _Exciting_ , isn’t it?” Rorek asked leaning on the console and tapping in several codes he’d brought down from the archives to pull up more schematics. “These might be the most advanced robotics systems Altean sciences have ever built! Right under our very noses!”

“Wake them.”

Both stilled and stared at him uncertainly. “Right now? Are you sure you don’t want to run some tests to be sure of the stability first?”

“I’m sure,” Alfor said, raising his gaze from the screens to the five creatures. “I can’t explain it, but I have… a feeling.”

There was some muttering beside him, then a soft “Alright then,” from Rorek. “Coran, here, you handle these keys, I’ll take this set of codes.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

The lions yawned and stretched leisurely as they roused, just as if they were their namesakes. As if recognizing their own alertness, they rumbled and muttered greetings to each other before finally noticing the small figures among them. Huge muzzles all turned and lowered expectantly in their directions, and he heard Coran inhale sharply behind him.

But strangely, Alfor felt perfectly calm as he stepped out from behind the consoles and walked out to stand before them.

“Lions of Voltron, I am Alfor, grandson of Jollar and current ruler of Altea. I know you were built as weapons of war,” he said to the great mechanical beasts, and tails lashed disdainfully at the reminder. “But I have another proposition for you.”

—

“All of the tracking protocols have been installed successfully, Sire,” Coran called down from his perch near Black’s ear, then began the climb down.

“Excellent.” Alfor gave the giant metal cat a pat on the nose as it allowed its temporary engineer to reach the ground before raising its head. “They should be all ready to set out on their search, then.”

“I’m still a little… iffy about this course of action, though.” Pulling up smaller versions of the schematic windows on his datapad, Coran waved to his uncle back at the central control station to begin the final systems checks. “I understand what the records said about the AI systems being very particular about what pilots they would accept, but, well, it’s an awfully _vast_ galaxy out there for them to search, isn’t it?”

“True,” Alfor admitted. “But as many sentients as there are, surely there’s still a wide pool of acceptable candidates for each of them. I trust that they won’t have very much trouble finding the pilots they want. If anything, my only worry is getting the pilots to accept _them_ in return.”

“Hm, point.” Little beeps and twitters occupied Coran’s attention for a moment, and he made several modifications to the screens before closing them down. “Alright, all systems are go.”

Black rose to its feet and shook itself, then _roared_ , the reverberating noise in the hanger loud enough that all three of them had to cover their ears. The motion was echoed by the other lions, all apparently eager to start out on their journey. Alfor managed to uncover one ear long enough to signal Rorek to open the main bay, and then he and Coran were nearly knocked off their feet by the resulting gust when several pair of afterburners activated all at once.

“Well, then,” Alfor coughed through the clouds of dust and smoke. “This shouldn’t take long at all.”

“Doesn’t seem like i- ah, sire?”

Alfor looked over at his adviser, then up in the direction Coran was pointing to find that Yellow was still standing over them after its siblings had all abandoned the hanger, tail sweeping back and forth. “Is- is something wrong?”

“There shouldn’t be. Everything came back sound. Uncle! Did you see anything on Yellow’s scans?”

“Not so much as a frayed wire!”

“There you go,” Alfor told the mechanical cat. “You’re perfectly healthy. So go find your-”

He supposed he could be forgiven for the extremely undignified yelp he made when the great beast suddenly _thumped_ itself down in front of him and lunged its head for him. When he’d opened his eyes again, he found that - _somehow_ \- he was hanging several feet above the floor of the hangar by the back of his robes.

Across the room, he could hear Rorek _howling_ with laughter. And below, Coran was conspicuously trying to hide his lower face behind his datapad. “ _Not._ A word,” Alfor warned his adviser threateningly, though he was sure that the fact he was currently being dangled like a kitten in the mouth of its mother made it come out a bit less intimidating than he'd intended.

All around him, there was a deep rumbling purr of satisfaction as the grip on his robes seemed to tighten. And deep in the back of his brain, there was a brand new itch, one that he was sure felt distinctly _smug_ somehow.

This... was going to be very interesting. Or awkward. Or both.

Likely both.


	9. Arrival

“-because you wouldn’t know a micrograv converter from your own _ass_ , you pugilistic _pinhead!_ ”

“Why you little _lirkash-trash_ -”

Alfor stepped through the doors to the sounds of muffled yelling, and his reflexes barely saved him from losing his head to an energy-rifle bolt. The source were a Yulnadae and Orichian engaged in heated conflict near the returned lions, a very distressed Rorallian attempting in vain to play peacemaker between the two.

“Ah, I see you got my message, Sire.”

Coran approached, his wrist-mounted particle shield engaged. He quickly moved to put himself between Alfor and the two combatants should weapons come into play again, and pulled out his datapad. “Ahem, I suppose I should make the rundown as quick as possible before things get any worse. Red chose the Yulnadae, Joitree. Apparently dragged her out of some holed up lab she had on Morla Prime.”

“Not an easy place to reach. They both must like a challenge.”

“Evidently. Green picked the Orichian, Mirje. Battlefield tank mechanic on Nothacha.”

“Which side?”

“The rebellion.”

Alfor nodded, noting that for later. “And Blue picked the Rorallian?”

“Dracha, a water singer on his homeworld. A good match for-.”

A sudden ringing sound cut them off and they both turned to find that Mirje’s rifle and the proton wrench Joitree had been wielding like a sword had been frozen solid. Both stared at the useless items in surprise before looking at Dracha and then dropping them in disgust. The move had apparently served its purpose, however, as instead of resuming their shouting match, they just went to sit on their lions’ paws and sulk.

Coran breathed a small sigh of relief and deactivated his shield. “As I was saying, a good match.”

“Indeed. Where’s Black?”

“Hasn’t come back yet. Should we wait to see if it returns, or try to make our case before those two tear each other apart?”

“Best to start talks while there is still relative peace,” Alfor said, then headed for the three selected pilots. All three looked up at his approach, and he smiled. “Good afternoon, honored guests. I am Alfor. Did you journey well?”

Neither Mirje, nor Joitree seemed inclined to answer, busy looking anywhere but each other, but Dracha did speak up. “Hmm, my metallic friend was most eager to chat on our trip. They say you wish us to aid in peacekeeping endeavours.”

“This is correct.” Alfor pulled over a chair and sat down, and Coran came to linger by his side as usual. “My grandfather originally built the Lions of Voltron as war machines, intending for Altea to become one of the galaxy’s superpowers. But the lions themselves wish to be _protectors_ , not _conquerors_.”

Mirje’s ears pricked forward with interest at that, and she uncurled from her defensive ball to look up at Green. “So you showed up on the rebellion’s side of the field for a _reason_ ,” she said, and seemed satisfied by whatever the lion rumbled in response. “All right, I’m in, as long as we’re going to be looking after the ones getting tromped on.”

Joitree drummed her claws on Red’s paw, still unconvinced. “You’re clearly expecting this to be a _team_ effort,” she said, and her expression soured further, eyes darting in Mirje’s direction, when Alfor nodded. Red tilted its head down to her, purring soothingly. After several seconds of mental conversation, she huffed in irritation. “ _Fine_. In the interest of scientific curiosity, I will _try_ this for a base observatory period. But don’t expect me to stick around longer than that.”

“Hmm, you will need a medic,” Dracha said with a simple shrug. “Hmm, I will go.”

“Excellent. Thank you, one and all.”

—

The new pilots had been settled into temporary quarters while Micelle got their preferences sorted out with the rest of the staff, and he was finishing up some reports for the governing council when the alert to his room pinged. “Come in.”

The doors swished open. “Black has re-entered the hanger, Sire.”

“Oh, good, I’ll be down in a few minutes,” Alfor said, then glanced up to find Coran grinning. “What is it?”

“You might want to make it a little quicker,” Coran replied, grin widening even more, then he turned and left, leaving Alfor wondering what that was supposed to mean. Puzzled, he closed down his reports and headed for the lifts.

“And that’s when the new Imperator moved to- there he is.”

“Alfor! What in the nine Javalli Hells have you gotten me into this time?”

He brightened at the familiar voice and swept into the hanger. “Zarkon! Hail and well met, old friend,” Alfor said as the Galran yanked him into a fierce arm lock that was the customary greeting of former training mates. “I can’t think of a better candidate for Black to choose.”

“Coran told me a bit of the plan before we got involved discussing our old Delra Nine warband. You never think small, do you?” Zarkon said with one of his small, rare smiles, clapping him on the back. “Come, we can all discuss the rest over food. It’s been a _long_ trip.”

“I can only imagine if you came all the way from the Brekkel Colonies,” Coran said, already alerting the kitchens over his datapad. “What in the stardust possessed your father to send an emissary _there_?”

“Brekkel?” Alfor asked, concerned. “Aren’t they still a hostile territory?”

“Yes,” Zarkon replied, lifting the plates at the back of his head to show a new set of scars below the base of his skull. “But Father’s convinced he can win them over as a Galra Nation ally. He’s not _entirely_ wrong. If we can just get past the fundamentalists, the trade routes will be favorable to both sides. But convincing them we’re not demons from the sky is the hard part.”

“Good luck with _that_. The last interplanetary expedition to contact them is still picking up the pieces, and that was well over a century ago. Do you still favor stew made from Gulpaka meat?”

“Stars, yes. Though at _this_ point, I could eat a _rock_.”

“Note: Add rocks for flavor,” Coran said, pretending to type it in, then ducked a joking punch from the Galran with a grin.

Laughing, Alfor settled into the lift with his friends, pleased that the Voltron plan was off to such a promising, if perhaps a _little_ shaky, start.


	10. On Edge

“Get your hoof out of my ear!”

“Get your claws off my ass!”

“Whose photon pistol is that humming?”

_“What?”_

They all froze their struggling and squabbling to hear the noise, then each tried to twist to see if it might be theirs. Before anyone could see in the dark, however, there was a sharp _vwip_ of the pistol going off, and all screeched in surprise as the net that contained them was ripped open, sending the five of them plummeting into the muck below.

“Plaugh,” Mirje groused in disgust, and she was finally able to reach her secondary light to see what they’d landed in. 

Then she started laughing when she got a good look at Joitree beside her.

The much smaller alien was so covered in sludge that only her eyeballs were visible, and said eyeballs were currently giving Mirje a look that could have made the Orichian spontaneously combust. Repeatedly. “You look like a Hemije,” the Green Paladin wheezed.

“I’m gonna _kill y-”_

 _“Enough,”_ Zarkon snapped, trying in vain to wipe the muck out from between his carapace plates. “Let’s just get moving and get this kalmat of a mission over with.”

Alfor switched on his own secondary light, trying not to wince when moving made him very aware of how much of the grime had managed to get _inside_ his armor and was currently sloshing against his inner suit. “Mirje, give me a boost, will you? I want to get a better look at that trap. Might find something useful.”

“Sure, let me find a spot I won’t sink in.” 

It took her four tries, the third of which nearly swamped Joitree as well and sent the Yulnadae scrambling onto a copse of scrubgrass with a flood of swearing and coughing. Once she’d finally found purchase, however, the Orichian cupped her hands and allowed him to step up onto her shoulder.

“See anything?” Zarkon asked as Dracha climbed up to join Joitree and try to help her scrub some of the muck out of her hair.

Alfor dug through some rotted bark until the light glinted off metal, then he pried the thing loose and tossed it down to his teammate. “Heat sensors. Definitely not local make, but I can’t identify them.”

“Let me see,” Joitree said, and the Black Paladin handed them over for her to inspect. After some scrutiny, a dark scowl crossed her face and she forced her claws into the seam, twisting it open. “I thought the circuitry pattern looked familiar, but this sigil proves it," she said, pointing to a small greenish-blue marking etched in next to one of the memory boards. "These are Hupree’s.”

“Another Yulnadae?” Dracha asked as Mirje let Alfor down with as little of a splash in the sludge as they could manage.

“Yeah, and a real pratchke. He tried to get my girlfriend Avisheh disqualified at the last symposium after her droid showed up his crew’s. Last I heard, he was looking for a bidder for his services, but then he fell off the map.”

“Looks like we know who bought him,” Mirje said flatly, then she bared her fangs in a grin. “How about we make this interesting? First one to catch him gets their baths paid for by the rest.”

“Last one to catch one of the Ghethipe mercenaries buys dinner for the whole team,” Zarkon added, eyes sparking with mischief.

“I’m in.”

“Hmm, I will join this wager as well.”

“Let’s do it.”

"I'm game."


	11. Battle Scars

The Paladins scattered in a desperate hurry before the smoke from the Lions’ landing had even cleared -Mirje’s tail was lashing feverishly behind her as she vanished down a hallway and Dracha had a hand clamped over his mouth as though he was about be ill- but Allura was pulling at his hand and jerked free to run to her father before he could process too much more. “Daddy!”

King Alfor pulled off his helmet as he approached, a dour-faced Zarkon trailing behind, and the smile he sported had evidently been plastered on for the benefit of the tiny bundle of energy that barreled into his midsection. “There’s my favorite dolly,” he said, catching his little princess up and swinging her around. “How have you been keeping while we were gone?”

“I’ve started training with the electrabatons!” Allura crowed, holding her hands out in a beginning stance, her face scrunched up fiercely. “The nannies are all in a fluff, but Coran says I’m old enough.”

“Well if Coran says you’re old enough, then you’re old enough.” Normally he would feel some measure of pride in the implicit trust his majesty has in his judgment when it comes to such matters, but the patient smile that was not that Alfor turned on him was clearly a request for escape, and Coran obediently moved to catch the squirming princess.

“Rapped me good on her first try, she did. But now it’s time for little princesses to be off to the baths.”

“Aw, but he just got home!”

“We’ll have all day together tomorrow, dolly, I promise,” Alfor said, and Allura scowled, but accepted the promise along with a kiss on the forehead.

As Coran turned to go, charge in his arms, however, he felt a light tap between his shoulderblades.

-’ _Meet me later.’-_

_\---_

Alfor wasn't in his chambers, nor anywhere near the kitchens. After a short hunt and a thoroughly unhelpful encounter with Zarkon, Coran was mildly surprised to find him in one of the private training halls, already changed into a sparring uniform. “…Sire?” he asked hesitantly. 

“It’s been awhile since we’ve done this, hasn’t it?”

He swallowed. “Not since Yellow chose you,” he replied, trying to keep his tone light as he went searching through the other halls for another set that would fit him. When he returned, Alfor had chosen a pair of training-dull barongs from the wall. It had been awhile since he had used those either. And certainly not with a partner who was clearly on edge. But...

Choosing another pair, he took a deep breath and settled into a loose opening stance, trying not to focus on how unsettlingly glazed over Alfor’s eyes looked.

Block, feint, dodge, step, turn, block again. 

It may have been awhile, but it seemed he remembered this better than he had expected-

Pain cracked through his left wrist, nerves electrifying all the way to his fingertips, and he involuntarily dropped the barong with a hissed curse. Before he could get another word out, a foot hooked his ankle and tripped him hard back against the wall, a flat blade pressed against his throat to make him drop the other in surrender. “Glories, _ow-_ alright, alright, you _win_ -”

He looked up and met empty eyes, and the blade pressed harder.

“Your majes-” His breath choked in his throat. “Sire-” He could feel his windpipe threatening to give. “ _Alfor!”_

His panic snapped his liege out of the haze, and Alfor jerked back, short swords clattering to the floor. Coran swallowed painfully, reaching up with his good hand to massage the bruise he was sure was already forming. More worrying to him, however, was the haunted expression on the king’s face as the other man stared at the floor, and once he was sure he had his breath back, he hesitantly touched Alfor’s upper arm, noting the way he twitched.

“What happened out there?”

Alfor exhaled, shuddering, slow, and pained, and leaned forward to rest his forehead against Coran’s shoulder, and was all he could do not to squawk in surprise at the intimately vulnerable gesture.

“I can’t talk about it. Not yet. Not... yet. Just… stay there for a minute, all right? I'm sorry, I’ll- I’ll look after your wrist.”

Coran bit his lip in thought for a moment, then straightened himself solidly and wrapped his uninjured arm around the other man’s shoulders. “Don’t you worry about that. Just take all the time you need.”


	12. Compromise

“Hmm, this seems like a dangerous idea.”

Coran scratched the back of his neck. “I’m inclined to agree with Dracha. What exactly are you planning to gain with this?”

“Those two can’t keep antagonizing each other forever and have this team remain a cohesive unit. They have to work out their aggression against each other  _ somehow _ ,” Zarkon said as he folded his arms and stared out over the rocky ground at the pair squaring off.

“You have a point,” Alfor admitted. “But why do you have their bayards? What are they going to fight with?”

“Their own inventions.”

“...Maybe we should have picked a vantage point further ba-” an explosion from the dueling ground cut him off and Coran found himself flung back by a shockwave, the breath knocked out of him when his back hit the cliffside behind him. Coughing painfully and hacking out dust and sand, he slowly tried to heave himself to his feet.  _ “Sweet stardust!” _

Alfor and Dracha had been protected by their armor, and Dracha had managed to tuck himself into a protective ball before colliding with the stone wall, but they still weren’t in much better shape than him. Only Zarkon had succeeded in keeping his feet, though he was painfully sneezing from the dust cloud and clearly in discomfort from the sand in the plates of his carapace as he tried to shake it out. 

Out on the field was a blaze of fire bursts, laser blasts, and small explosions erupting through the storm kicked up by the battle. He only caught a brief glimpse of both combatants bounding to evade traps and tricks, Mirje tossing aside a spent firearm, before the dust closed in again, obscuring them from view. 

“Are you sure they’re not going to  _ kill  _ each other at this rate?” he asked, worried.

Zarkon didn’t reply, but the faint deepening of the frown on his face was evidence enough of his growing concern-

-and then there was near-deafening  _ silence _ .

All four of them went still, warily looking out over the field as the cloud began to clear, unsure of what they were going to see once the dust finished settling.

“Son of a Komprak!”

Just a few feet away from each other, so close that each probably could have hit the other by spitting hard, it appeared that both Mirje and Joitree had gotten well and truly snared by each other’s weapons. Joitree lay in a heap, bound by some sort of vicious looking whip-like object, the details of which they couldn’t see from their distance. Mirje was having to practically curl herself in a ball to avoid having all her fur singed off by a glowing net of little pink mini-bots that were circling her threatningly. 

And they were both  _ laughing. _

Coran and Alfor glanced at each other, then the other two, and then all four jumped off the edge of the plateau, sliding down the cliffside to run over to their comrades.

“-ou maktha, you  _ have  _ to tell me how you managed to fit the backspikes into such thin cables! And the deployment was flawless!  _ How?  _ ” Joitree was saying, staring up at the sky from her knotted-up position when he reached her.

“Only if  _ you _ tell me how you got such small mind-boards to work in total synchronization,” Mirje replied, wincing slightly when a bot’s beam zapped her tail. Alfor and Dracha tried in vain to catch one of the little monsters to break the net, but all they succeeded in doing was getting their gauntlets scorched.

“How do we disable this thing?”

“Ow, ow,  _ ow,  _ easy with the cables, Klaka. Here, just-  _ Ow _ , the control to the net’s in the back of my armor collar.”

Coran obliged, finding a small silver object with a little pink button that killed the bots when he pushed it. 

Freed from her prison, Mirje gratefully stretched, then came over to gently butt him out of the way. “I got you, goblin,” she said, reaching down to twist part of one of the cables that had Joitree tied. The spikes retracted neatly, making them loose enough that the smaller alien could easily wriggle free. “So, booze?”

“I’m good with that.”

Alfor lightly elbowed Zarkon as they followed the pair back to where the Lions were waiting. “Smugness does not become you, old friend.”

If anything, Zarkon’s smile only widened.


	13. Standby

It was very rare that the Lions spoke to him. Oh, they rumbled and muttered and interacted with him as lions were wont. But they didn’t often _talk_ to him with the soft whispers in the back of his skull like Alfor and the others frequently described. 

So when he heard the urgent murmurs before the big metal beasts had even properly landed in the hanger, he was worried. “What’s wrong? Is anyone injured?” Coran asked as he rounded the comm and navigations station to run out to the main floor.

Black approached first, lowering her head and opening her mouth so he could get to the cockpit.  _‘Exhaustion,’_ whispered the voice in his head.  _‘Bad air.’_ He was given the overall impression of something seeping into the cockpit despite Lions’ best attempts to filter everything before it could reach their Paladins. 

“Alright, girls. You did what you could,” he said, using the soothing tone he often took when Allura was upset or scared. “We’ll take care of them from here.” 

He could still feel their nervousness, their distress, but it eased up from being directly pressing into his mind to just an overall tension in the air. Able to focus better, he leaned over Zarkon to begin checking him, already sending an alert to the medic teams over his comm earpiece. 

The Galran was breathing easily, but he felt suspiciously warm. When Coran pried an eye open, Zarkon groaned a little, eye rolling before trying and failing to focus on him. “Rrgh. S’late… I’ll… be on… the field… in…” he started to slur.

“Don’t worry about it,” Coran replied. “You’re not going anywhere but the infirmary right now.”

Zarkon made a slightly irritated expression, but only groaned again before closing his eye and going slack. Coran squeezed his shoulder before climbing out of the cockpit to go check on each of the others in turn.

“Get Kepprii to… to work on it, chief…i- immuno…compromised…” Joitree mumbled, her skin cold and clammy, her ears drooping, and her breathing labored as she shivered in her harness.

“Is… it… is it already time… for the morning report?” Alfor asked, eyes glazed over and disturbingly greenish around the pupils as he sat slumped forward against Yellow’s controls, even more feverish than Zarkon.

Dracha and Mirje appeared to be in the best shape. No ill effects, just pure burn out. One couldn’t be too careful, though. So when the medics called up to him from the floor as he was still crouched by Mirje’s harness, he directed them to all five Lions. “No cryos necessary, but all will need full systems flush! Airborne pathogen to be identified, positively affects Galran, Yulnadae, and Altean physiologies!. Orichian and Rorallian reactions unknown!”

“Yessir!” the lead medic replied, all of them activating breathing masks. One tossed an extra up to him. It wasn’t going to do much good if he’d already been exposed, though he put more faith in the Lions’ efforts to clear the air on the way home than that, but one couldn’t be too careful, he supposed, and he put it on. 

Mirje growled fuzzily as she was unclipped from her harness and loaded onto a floating stretcher, and a couple of medics nervously backed up, looking to him for guidance. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes at their skittishness over a sleepy Orichian, Coran, waved at them to get a move on. 

Once everyone was on the floor, he made sure he stuck close to Alfor’s stretcher.

\---

After submitting to getting checked over by the medics and a thoroughly unwilling run through a decontamination spray, Coran had taken up vigil in the room full of beds Alfor and the other Paladins had been set up in.

“Thhppt."

"Ptthh."

"Thbth.” 

Four cycles and twenty two cliks in, he looked over to find Joitree had woken up and attempting to spit out the pump tube the medics had stuck down her throat for part of the fluids flush. “Oi, leave that in.”

“Ik tat ike mekka thit,” she garbled around the part pressed against her tongue, her nose crinkled in disgust.

“Believe me, I’m well aware of how filthy the taste is, but you’ve got half a cycle to go before they declare you clear.” After making sure Alfor was still comfortable and stable, he picked up his chair and shifted over next to her bed. 

“Ak appened?” 

“Something managed to sneak past the air filtration the Lions work for the lot of you and you were all too burned out from the mission to notice it before it put you down,” Coran said simply, taking off his glove to feel her forehead. She was still unnaturally cold, but the sweating seemed to have eased off. “Mirje and Dracha came off the best of it. No sickness, just exhaustion.”

Joitree managed a faint buzzing noise with her tongue around the tube that conveyed her annoyed jealousy all too well, and Coran snorted in amusement as he put his glove back on. 

From across the room, Zarkon groaned in mixed irritation and pain as he also came to. “Damn e ights,” he grumbled, having just as much trouble talking around the pump tube as Joitree was. 

Coran reached over Joitree’s bed to the overhead light controls and dimmed them a bit. “Better?”

“Muk.” The expression on Zarkon’s face was still extremely sour, however, and Coran could guess that he was no more pleased about the tube than Joitree was. 

“Twenty-two cliks left,” he said in response to the obvious unasked question, and after dual groans, both replied in words that didn’t really _need_ translating.


	14. Medic

“You tie the best bandage knots.”

Coran bit the inside of his cheek. Across from him, Mirje had no such compunctions and was already snickering, but as a castle employee, he had to pretend to have _some_ decorum, and that included not laughing at your injured royal.

Even if he _was_ currently out of his mind on pain medication.

“No, I really mean it. They’re so neat and kinda pretty. Like flower patterns.”

“I’m sure the medics would be offended to know you think so little of their bandaging skills,” Coran said gently, patting Alfor on the arm as he finished the last of the wounds. “They might even go on strike, and then where would you be?”

“That’d be fine, because then I’d have you, and you’re better than them.”

Coran shot a _look_ at Mirje, who’d clamped her claws over her muzzle and looked like she was near fit to explode. “Royal Advisor _and_ Medic, sire? Might be a bit much.”

“No, you’re right. I’m sorry. I ask you to do too much as it is.”

Alfor looked _so sad_ about it, too, that Coran almost instantly felt guilty about his joke. _Ancients help me,_ he thought, starting to clean up the medical kit for a distraction, _any_ distraction. 

“He can handle it, your kingship. Don’t feel bad for him,” Mirje cut in, saving him from the increasingly awkward conversation.

“He _does_ do such a good job, doesn’t he? We’d be so lost without him. I know I would.”

Or maybe she hadn’t, he thought, face heating to an impressive pink.

“Thanks,” he hissed at the Orichian, who just gave him a huge grin full of sharp teeth.

“Just think, there’s six more cycles before the drugs wear off.”


	15. Three Steps

“You think your cousins will mind?” Alfor asked, running his fingers through newly petal pink and pale green hair.

“Honestly? They’d find it hysterical that the King of Altea nicked their look,” Coran said with a grin. “I must say, it’s very strange to see you completely clean-shaven, however.”

“True. I do miss that,” Alfor agreed. After a bit more consideration, the goatee reappeared. “I think the skin color change will be enough that no one will wonder about the facial hair.”

“You could alter up some other features if you’re worried about it.”

“Hm…” After a few more tweaks, Alfor finally waved away the holomirror, and it vanished. “I think that’s as good as it’s going to get. I hope this place of yours is worth the effort of sneaking out.”

“The Triple Mind Sisters are playing tonight.” 

There wasn’t really much more that needed to be said.

—

The club was softly lit by floating cubes of purple, blue, and green that drifted in glittering columns. To his comfort, it was more of an evening dinner club than a dance club, and Coran pulled him to a table overlooking the stage in the center of the room that was lit in purple spotlights. “This is nice.”

“Not the upper-upper crust, but at least we won’t be getting in any bar fights, ey?” Coran asked teasingly as he signaled their drink orders to a waiter.

“That was _not_ my fault.”

“Oh sure, sure, someone _else_ just happened to trip Golagar the Red into smashing his face against a stool while we were undercover with the team last moon.”

Alfor said nothing, but he couldn’t help the tiniest grin. Seeing the slaver crack off a tusk as he bounced off the stool and hit the ground had been _really_ satisfying. And as he glanced over at Coran and read the other man’s smirk, he could tell he agreed, even if he was ribbing him over it. 

Muffled drums from the stage brought their attention over the railing as three Mabarka females stepped into the spotlights, and a shiver went up his spine as they began singing.

Now, he understood.

—

Technically, they weren’t supposed to approach the musicians. But, it seemed, Coran knew people here. As they stepped into the antechamber near the bar where the Sisters and their band were packing up, he took a deep breath and slowly released the disguise transformation.

The ripple of shapeshifting caught the attention of one of the band members, and he pointed an accusing finger. “No visitors!” he snapped.

Coran started to move in front of him in case they got it in their heads to call a bouncer, but before he could, one of the Sisters turned to her musician. 

“Ke’pet’chu tu’llee o’che’ta!” she hissed, making him back down, before turning to them. “Forgive him. He doesn’t recognize you.”

Alfor swallowed. “You do?”

“Of course. You are the mate of the Kinswoman Queen, may her spirit walk sunlit paths.”

Coran put a hand on his shoulder, and only then did he realize he was shaking. “Illyere recommended me your music. This was the first chance I’d gotten to hear it in person. I-… I would like to invite you to play again.”

“That is a very high honor. But would your brethren accept us?”

Alfor allowed himself a small smile. “At a diplomatic summit, they would have to in order to save face among the many races.”

The musicians began to laugh, and for a moment, he thought he might have mis-stepped. But then the Sister who had taken the lead held out a hand. “You have a deal, Kinsman King,” she said, and his heart fluttered a little at the change of address. “Come, we will make arrangements.”

He glanced back to Coran, and Coran grinned reassuringly, clapping him lightly on the back. 

Then he accepted the offered hand.


	16. Honor

“Comfortable up there?” Coran asked in amusement as he approached the bar.

Joitree grinned from her perch on Mirje’s shoulder and wiggled for emphasis. “Much.” 

“I can toss you across the room with one hand, goblin.”

“But you won’t, because you love me.”

Mirje rolled her eyes in fond exasperation and handed up a glass of Perunima Spirits, keeping one for herself. “You're not stuck with Alfor today?”

“They won’t need me, nor any of the other aides unless the talks start getting more intense. One secretary can handle the full meeting for-”

“Well, well, I see the Altean pet has been let off his leash.”

Coran stiffened, caught off guard, and Mirje made a soft growl into her glass as a richly ornamented Tur’lissin approached. “I- I beg your _pardon?”_

“Oh, don’t play coy,” the newcomer said with an imperious sniff, either ignoring or unaware of the threatening air the two Paladins on his other side were giving off. “ _Anyone_ can see how your king flaunts you. It’s rather _sickening_ that he would bring a bedslave to such a prestigious-”

It was hard to tell which of the pair moved first, but either way, a glass smashed over the Tur'lissin's gilded head just as a black-furred fist caught him solidly in the jaw. Before Coran could react, the two had pounced the crass loudmouth hard enough to drag him into the next room's buffet area.

“I’m gonna rip all three of your tails off!” Mirje was snarling as she threw him on the table, Joitree leaping off her shoulder to yank on his horns.

“What in the flaming blue hells is going on?” Zarkon asked, appearing at Coran’s side.

“Um… well…”

“Hmm, the unlucky one called Sir Coran a bedslave,” Dracha said, the tip of his tail twitching in ire as he popped up on Coran's other.

“ _You heard that?!”_

Zarkon’s eyes flashed. “Is that so?” he asked, rolling up his sleeves.

Coran blanched. “Nooo-  _No!_ No, no, no, don’t you two _dare_ -”

—

“The amount of damages is unfortunate,” Alfor said placidly.

“Yes, sire,” Coran mumbled, wishing he could just vanish into the carpet.

“I’m pretty sure we’ve all been banned.”

“Mhmm.”

“Pity I wasn’t there to punch him in the nose myself.”

“ _Sire!”_


	17. Promises

The electrabatons clicked neatly into their places one by one, pulled in by magnetic force as Coran sorted them back out. Behind him, Allura swung herself up onto the railing between the gear racks and the sparring floor -he’d long since given up telling her  _not_ to- watching intently.

"You did very well today, your highness. Getting to be quite light on your feet, especially considering you're still in an early growing stage. However, you'll need to start guarding more on your left side, especially during-"

“I think Daddy likes you.”

“Well, I should hope so, your highness,” Coran replied, blithely not missing a beat as he gave another baton a gentle toss into its rack. “As many years as we’ve been working together.”

“ _No._ I mean… I mean I think Daddy _loves_ you.”

 _That_ made him nearly drop the last one on his own foot, missing only by luck, before he turned awkwardly, feeling warm pink around the edges of his ears. “I- I beg your pardon?”

Allura was fiddling with a loose thread around the cuff of one of her ankles, staring at the floor. “I just… I notice that sometimes, when he’s watching you work or watching us play, he gets this kinda… I dunno… It’s like a _fluffy_ look. Like he used to give Mama.”

“…Oh.” Coran hesitated, then picked up the fallen baton and put it away before going over to hop up onto the railing with her. “Does it bother you?”

She gave a little shrug, but didn’t look up, still tugging at the thread. “I still miss Mama, but… but I like you, too.”

He gently put an arm around the little princess, and Allura finally unfolded from her ball, burrowing into his side. “I still miss your mother, too,” Coran said, petting long hair that had been braided up into a training bun. “She was a fine lady and a dear friend.”

“Mm… do you love Daddy?”

“Er-” Coran coughed, hoping he wasn’t starting to glow yet. “Well, I- I suppose I have had thoughts leaning that way on occasion, yes. It’s… complicated.”

“Oh.”

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Allura made a small hiccup. At the feeling of his training shirt getting wet, Coran became alarmed and got down off the railing to find the little princess in tears. “Allura, sweetbug, what’s wrong?”

“If you and Daddy fall in love, does that mean you’ll get taken away forever like Mama?”

 _Oh_ , no.

Coran instantly scooped Allura into his arms, holding on tight. “No, sweetbug, no,” he soothed, rubbing her back as sharp little claws formed and ripped into his shirt from her clinging. “What happened was an accident, it wasn’t-”

“I don’t want you to go away!” 

It would be a foolish thing for him to do, he knew that. There were a thousand things that could happen in the future. More accidents. Sickness. Assassination. The stars only knew what else.

But all that mattered right then was a little girl who’d had someone important ripped away from her and was terrified of losing more.

“I won’t go away, sweetbug. I won’t ever leave you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Nixet Promise?”

Shifting her weight so he could free a hand, he held it out. Sniffling, she wiped her eyes, then held up hers. Middle fingers linked, then pinkies, then they tapped each other’s noses and bared their teeth at each other and growled. 

Satisfied, she squeezed him fiercely one more time before allowing him to put her down. “Go scrub up for supper,” he said, gently tweaking an ear. “If you wash behind these extra well, Nurse Prichel might let you have seconds on dessert.”

That finally earned a smile. “Okay,” she said, bowing a little before running out the door. He watched her go, then sighed and scratched the back of his neck before going to begin rolling up the mats.

It seemed he and Alfor were going to have a lot to talk about soon.


	18. Secrets

Pink-white glowing pollma bugs glittered and flashed in the garden flowers, giving the late-evening air a calming feel. Alfor folded his hands in the sleeves of his robes and leaned back in the balcony chair, watching them flit among the bushes and savoring a few rare minutes of relaxation.

A soft cough broke into his mindless musing, and he raised his head to find Coran standing at the window-door. “My apologies if I’m interrupting something, Sire.”

“Not at all,” Alfor replied with a smile. “Come sit for a bit if you don’t have anywhere to be.” His advisor accepted the offer, but as Coran sank into a chair and stared up at the binary moons, Alfor could see tension lining every limb in his body. “Something bothering you?”

“No. Maybe… It’s… It’s something her highness said at training last small moon cycle.”

Alfor frowned faintly. “Is she alright? She’s not having trouble with studies, or-”

“No, it’s not like- it’s not that.” Coran swallowed, looking uncomfortably like he was going to be sick for a moment, then inhaled deeply and steadied himself. “She… said she has been noticing things. About us. Or… to be more specific… your feelings about me.”

For a moment, Alfor was very sure the floor had dropped out from under him. The calming breeze around them seemed to have gone very still, replaced by a warning hum in the back of his head. Maybe his heart stopped. It was hard to tell.

Coran was looking at him with concern, though concern for what reason, it was hard to say. “Is she wrong?” he asked hesitantly.

_‘Lie!’_ hissed a voice deep within that humming noise that was growing louder by the second. His mouth felt dry and it was hard to swallow. _**‘Lie!’**_

“No. She’s not.” Javalli hells, _why_ had he _said_ that? This was going to-

“Oh, well then,” Coran said, laughing nervously as he raked his fingers through his hair. “I- I, um, I have to admit I’m sort of glad to hear you say that-”

His heart went from stopped to racing. He couldn’t have-

“- and yet at the same time, I wish you hadn’t.”

Alfor hid his hands deeper in his sleeves to disguise the fine tremors. “Coran, you can’t be saying-”

“It doesn’t matter either way,” Coran said, still looking anywhere but in his eye. “No one would accept it, we both know that. A royal taking a consort from the  _servant_ class? It just isn’t _done_. I'm not exactly sure why I was even foolish enough to bother you with-”

“Wait.”

Afraid that the other man would get up and leave, he reflexively reached out and took hold of Coran’s hand. Only after they’d both frozen at the gesture did he realize how impulsive it was, but they both just sat there for a minute, staring at each other’s clasped hands, neither inclined to be the one to let go.

It wasn’t clear which of them broke the tension first. A tilt of the head, a puff of breath, a word that never made it to voice, maybe none of the above. The kiss was brief. Gentle. Nervous. Almost _shy_ , and ended too soon as they both jerked back, releasing their hold.

Silence stretched between them as the breeze picked back up, ruffling their hair and clothing.

“I can’t do this,” Coran finally mumbled miserably, putting his head in his hands. “I can’t risk dragging you down with me, I-”

“No one has to know.”

“What?”

Alfor stared down into the flowers. His hands were shaking again. This was such a bad idea, but he couldn’t let it go. Not _now._ Not knowing the truth. “If no one were to find out… would you be okay with this? With us?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder at the other man.

Coran stared back at him, wide-eyed. “Alfor, what you’re suggesting-”

“I _know_. I know the consequences of getting caught.” He tilted his head slightly, eyebrows raised. “But you can’t possibly tell me that _none_ of my illustrious relatives didn’t have a few relationships worth hiding.”

Coran snorted, then chuckled. “I’m sure some of _my_ relatives could confirm that they _did_ ,” he said, scrubbing his face with his hands. “You’re really serious about this, then?”

Alfor held out a hand. “Coran, house of Virak, would you honor me with your companionship?”

Coran took a deep breath, then tentatively brushed his fingers against Alfor's palm before resolutely clasping their hands together, fingers laced tightly. “Alfor, house of Lothal, I accept.”


	19. Ailments

“Have you all finished the- oh. Oh, dear.”

“One snicker out of you, Klaka, and I’ll turn every pair of underwear you own into a rampaging war golem and send them all marching down the parade lines.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Coran replied, though he couldn’t help just the tiniest catch in his voice. It was… very, _very_ hard not to keep a straight face in the face of what sat before him.

Joitree was hunkered on the medical diagnostic table, a dark scowl on her shimmering purple face. Her markings were flashing in little pastel spots every time she so much as twitched, which she did frequently whenever another medic came close. 

“Well, um, apparently the cure for Grikgangal Infection has… er… quite the reaction to Yulnadae blood.”

“Apparently,” the small alien muttered sourly, baring her teeth in a hiss at another medic.

“How are the others far-”

A deeply unamused growl alerted them to Mirje’s arrival from the other side of the quarantine hall.

Coran bit his tongue _very_ hard.

Black and gold fur had turned silver and green and was standing entirely on end, making her look nearly three times her size. _Somewhere_ in all that fluff was a set of eyes and teeth, but the best estimate he could get was from the twitching of her ears, still poking out of the fur.

Joitree snorted, and the puff-ball that was Mirje’s head whipped in that direction, but apparently both were feeling too miserable to find anything funny about the other.

He couldn’t exactly blame them.

Two down, three to go. At least Alfor wouldn’t have to worry about this, he thought with a little bit of guilty relief. The curative had been tested and refined on Alteans several turnings ago. But Dracha and Zarkon, oh Glories-

His ears twitched to catch the tinkling sound that appeared behind him, like falling shards of glass, and he turned to-

Oh, no.

Coran froze, then immediately clapped a hand over his mouth at the sight of Zarkon, blackened bits of carapace forming and cracking off almost too fast to keep track of. The Black Paladin had left a _trail_ of the hardened pieces that were now piling around his feet in a seemingly ceaseless shower.

“Not. A word.” his old friend rumbled with a flat glare, and Coran merely nodded.

“Hm. I believe it would be best that we forget this,” said a vaguely blobby orange shape that it took him several tics to realize was Dracha. “Hm, I for one, would be much happier not remembering.”

How- 

_How_ in-

“Most definitely,” Joitree muttered, cutting off his confused attempt at figuring _that_ one out.

“Agreed.”

“The sooner, the better.”

“Motion to strike this mission from the record upheld, then,” Coran said.


	20. Blind Spot

Coran stared at the lions through a series of holodisks that had scattered all over the floor around him when he'd landed and were currently glitching and jittering as they tried to recover from the impact.

He blinked.

He was sure he could hear several of them _laughing,_ the sound registering as deep almost-barks in the base of his skull.

At least Green had the grace to look _embarrassed_ , or at least as embarrassed as a giant metal cat _could_ look, as he slowly, very carefully righted himself from the upside down position he’d ended up in after being tossed halfway across the hanger into the north wall. 

“Well, then,” Coran said, still more than a bit dazed. After wobbling on his feet a little and nearly pitching into a stack of fuel cannisters, he decided sitting would be much wiser and let himself collapse back against the wall. “That was unexpected.”

Tail carefully tucked around her right hind leg to avoid a second mis-swing, Green approached in a sheepish crouch and dropped her head to give him an apologetic nose-nudge with much more care than the great beasts usually used. 

“No, no, I’m quite fine,” Coran reassured the Lion at the soft rumbling question in the back of his mind, reaching up give the steel-plated snout a reassuring pat. “Just a bit dizzy. Probably won't even be bruised in the morning. And accidents happen, _right_ , Red?”

If anything, Red only seemed even more amused at being reminded of the time she’d backed up over Zarkon and the impressive swearing streak the Galran let loose with in response while pinned under her paw. Yellow snickered along with her while Black shook her head at both. 

Green, meanwhile, seemed intent on sticking beside him until he’d recovered enough to get up. Touched, Coran continued to pet her nose while the big cat curled up against the wall, snuggling up as much as she dared. “You’re a good girl,” he reassured her.

She purred softly in response, resting her head next to him.


	21. Seize

”-and the warp coils should- are you alright, sir?”

Coran blinked several times, and slowly his surroundings came back to him. Castle engine room, lower decks, going over upgrades concerning better efficiency of energy. Right… where had he gone? “I’m… I’m fine, ensign. Just lost my thoughts for a moment, there. Continue.”

She gave him a very worried look, but opened up another window floating above her datapad. “W-well,um, there are the-”

And then he couldn’t hear her again, his view of the room slowly blurring to nothing but moving colors as his head began to hum in a very high pitched tone. Coran squinted fiercely, tryng to will his vision to come back, but only after it wavered several times did it snap into focus.

“S-sir? Maybe you should see the infirmary.”

He jumped slightly, realizing his hearing had come back as well, and turned back to the ensign, finding her nervously holding out one hand as if to catch him by the arm and clutching the datapad for comfort with the other. Probably a relatively new hire. Definitely not equipped to see her boss’ boss pass out on the floor. 

“I’ll…I’ll do that.”

—

The lift ride was thankfully a short one, but even as gentle as it was, it left him feeling like half his brain and most of his stomach had been abandoned on the floors below. Very slowly, he made his way out and down the halls, the vision wavers coming faster and more frequent. 

Glories, this was terrible. He couldn’t remember _ever_ being this sick. His brain felt like emergency ration gel sloshing about in his head.

It was getting harder to keep his balance, and he found himself forced to lean against the wall for purchase.

Just keep walking.

Almost there.

One step, two step, three ste-

His knees buckled under him, tripping his feet up, and he pitched forward, crashing into a table of decorative plants. He vaguely remembered trying to get out a slurred, stammering yell for help, and then everything went white.

—

He’d been finishing up the last notes on a speech for a diplomatic visit to the Norakal Rings when an emergency page from the infirmary flashed up on his desk. 

In the background, he could hear Allura crying hysterically, and for a terrifying second he’d thought she’d been seriously wounded. And then that fear hadn’t abated when the medics informed him Coran had been found in a full seizure state in the halls, having apparently collapsed before he could make it in. “On my way,” Alfor barked before hurrying to the lifts, notes forgotten.

The sight that met him when he arrived was barely controlled chaos. The nurses were trying in vain to pry Allura away from the cryopod Coran had been installed in, and the man in question looked _terrible._ Glowing spiderwebby veins were growing across his skin from his bioluminescent markings and deep dark rings had formed under his eyes, along with bruises and bloody scratches apparently caused by thrashing in the pieces of the broken table. “Do we know what happened?” Alfor asked.

At the sound of his voice, Allura finally let go of the pod and ran to cling to him, and though she was really getting too big to be carried, he hefted her up and hugged her tight. “He was all covered in glass and it was cutting him up and- and he wasn’t _breathing_!” she sobbed into his neck.

That concerned him. “You saw it?”

“Her highness scraped up her leg a little in the gardens,” one of the nurses explained. “We were leaving the infirmary and she saw Coran and was running to him when he went down.”

‘ _Damn_ ,’Alfor thought, biting his lip as he gave her another squeeze before turning back to the pod.

“We have him stable,” one of the medics said. “It will take considerable time to flush the offending agent from his system and identify it. However, we _can_ say that this is _not_ any form of natural reaction.”

Alfor felt bile raise in his throat as the realization hit him in a sick wash of anger. “He’s been poisoned.”

“Affirmative, my liege.”

—

“He promised he wouldn’t go away, Daddy. He _promised.”_

 _“_ It will be alright, dolly, don’t fret. The medics are doing everything they can to take care of him, see?”

Allura made a tiny sniffle and clutched the holodraw sticks she was holding a little tighter, and Alfor gently petted his daughter’s hair to soothe her worries. “Why don’t you make him a holo of the rhiapips you both like to catch? I’m sure he’d enjoy that when he wakes up.”

Another sniff. “Can I make the fluff pink spotted?”

“Any color you like, dolly.”

Allura wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve -the nurses were going to have something to say about _that_ little habit, but he didn’t much care at the moment- and gripped the pink holodraw stick with newfound resolve. Alfor watched her sculpture doodling with an indulgent smile for a few minutes, then his expression darkened again when he turned attention back to the cryopod his partner was recovering -slowly, so _slowly_ \- in.

The poison had been identified as liquified Lorken Weed, which had come as no small surprise since the only planetoid it grew on was one that had a friendly trade agreement with Altea. 

He’d spent two sleepless nights alternating between keeping vigil and talks with the Iriachian Ruler that had amounted to a lot of “No, no, of _course_ we are not accusing anyone, we merely believe someone may have abused your hopitality to acquire a highly potent poison that just _happened_ to find it’s way into the bloodstream of my Royal Advisor.”

A headache, to be sure, but in the end, the political doublespeak had been effective. The Iriachians had finally admitted that there was a sect of isolationists that _might_ have been attacking planets that the rulers had sought trade with.

A target to pin down.

A hissing sound pulled him out of his thoughts and he looked up to see the medics had raised the chamber up to the standing position and were beginning to open it.

“Not just yet, sir.” One said when Coran tried to stir and pull against the holding bonds. “You’re still not in any condition to stay on your own feet. Breathe in, please.”

Coran made a weak, muffled protest as a mask was fitted over his nose, but started inhaling whatever medication they were flooding him with. He still looked wrecked. The glowing veins were gone, but in their places were slowly fading white scars. His eyes were dull and unfocused and his hands had a visible tremor.

Alfor gently restrained Allura from trying to run to him. “Not just yet, dolly. Let the medics finish putting him back together.”

“Aww.”

Coran raised his head a little at their voices, and though his eyes didn’t focus all that much more, he managed a weak smile behind the mask. At that, Alfor did rise and pick Allura up before he approached. “You’re a mess, old man.”

“Iiii f-feel l-lik-ke it,” Coran slurred. “-haaap- pened?”

“You took an impressive dose of Lorken Weed. Any more and you would have been dead.” Alfor looked away and watched the medics bustle, the weakened state of his partner up close too much for just a moment. “From the looks of it, they’re probably going to put you on rest for a bit.”

“Pish. I-I’llll be- be f-fine byyy-”

Allura leaned out and grabbed him tight despite the mask and hose, burying her face into his neck. “Please just get better, okay? We can’t play when you’re sick.”

Coran wilted, then tilted his head to give her a fond nuzzle. “Well….Iiiii- I can-c-can’t aaargue with that. Yeees’m.”

Relieved, he tugged Allura back and leaned in to surreptitiously sweep his fingers through his partner’s hair while the medics weren’t looking. “We’ll be back to look in on you soon. Be safe.”


	22. Morning Chatter

It was only a half-cycle left to morning, and yet the flickering light of multiple screens on in the hanger wasn’t a surprising one when he finished the last of his rounds. “You two at it again?” Coran asked as he peered around Green’s left hind leg. The lion rumbled at his presence then, evidently remembering past accidents, shifted her leg and curled her tail around it to give him space and let him see better. 

The two Paladins were hunched over scattered parts and computations that looked like it could combine into half an armory. “Upgrades don’t wait for sleep, Klaka,” Joitree said, using her species’s pet name for him. “Have to work while the lethas are bright.”

“Yes, that’s why the bags under your eyes are always so spectacular,” he replied dryly, approaching to lean over the pint-sized alien’s shoulder and see the schematics she was designing. “Glories- what the quiznak is _that_?”

She tilted her head back to look up at him, eyes and smile wide and sharp little teeth glinting a little too brightly in the blue light of the screen. “You liiiike it? Red wanted more firepower since Zarkon’s been sending us into more hotspots as of late.”

“It’s… a bit much, isn’t it?”

“You know the squirt, no such thing as overkill when it comes to building big,” Mirje said from her spot constructing some kind of new armor gauntlet. Twisting a bolt into place with her claws, her tail swished in satisfaction. “Pull up a seat and hang around for awhile. You don’t have to go play instructor for a couple of cycles, right?”

“He might have _other_ plans, though, Mirmir.”

Coran eyed Joitree at the mischievous tone in her voice. “And what might _t_ _hat_ mean?” he asked as Mirje tried to cover her snickering.

“ _Noooo_ thing. Just thought, you know, you might go have breakfast with Alfor. Or something _else_. That’s what… _friends_ …do, right? Good _friends?_ ”

Mirje was nearly choking from trying to hold in laughter by then, and Coran was fairly sure he was outright _glowing_  all the way to his ears. “I- you- you two have _no_ idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on,” Mirje said, finally managing to get air and wipe the forming tears from her eyes. “Maybe you’ve managed to cover the rest of the castle’s eyes in Pochecca fur, but we’re _Paladins.”_

 _“_ And scientists at that. Observation’s kind of our job, Klaka,” Joitree said, linking her fingers and resting her chin on them. “Mirje and I technically won the bet on you two four moons ago, though we'll probably never get to claim it.”

Coran felt a bit sick to his stomach, and his legs weakened a bit. Thankfully Mirje caught him by the back of the collar and plopped him in the chair she had been sitting in only a moment ago. “Zarkon? Dracha?”

“Probably know. They haven’t said anything, though. We didn’t say anything to them either.” Joitree shrugged. “You know how they are.”

“And… It’s fine? You two are fine with it?”

“Are you kidding?” Mirje snorted and clapped him on the back so hard he nearly fell out of the seat. “We’re going to rag on you for _weeks!_ But out of love, we promise. Next round of drinks is on me, too.”

“Oooh, I can’t wait to design the fireworks show at the wedding.”

“And the hundred-ion-turret salute.”

"Pachi cakes that shoot confetti!"

"What about _these?_ " Mirje asked, holding up a schematic, and the two shared an absolutely _wicked_ grin. 

“Green! Red! Get in on this!”

Coran couldn’t help a weak chuckle as the two inventors switched gears from weapons design to wedding explosives with a pair of lions to add their own input. Of course such a thing would never happen, and they knew that just as well as he did. Politics would never allow it.

But watching miniature holo-mockups of ion turrets shoot flower-shaped rays across the room _did_ make him feel immeasurably better after so many months of nervous secrecy, he had to admit. Hefting himself out of the seat at Joitree’s wave, he went to go assist with color choices, grinning all the while.


	23. Experimentation

Joitree’s eyes were shining when he sat up after his maintenance was over, and that instantly meant one thing.

Be very afraid.

“What have you done?” Coran asked, reflexively inspecting himself for any explosive modifications. 

Nothing _looked_ like it was going to go up in flames…

“I gave you some new emergency blasters!” the pint-sized alien chirped in glee. “Check ‘em out!” She grabbed hold of his ankle and lifted his leg, nearly knocking him off balance, and pressed a panel in his calf.

Coran gaped when two small jet-like objects popped out of either side of the ‘shin’. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Joitree… why?”

“Efficiency, of course!” she said, closing the panels. “Think about it. You’re still technically the royal bodyguard, whether Alfor’s acknowledging it or not, because you’re watching out for Allura. You might get in some really deep kepraka someday and not have any other weapons on you. Wouldn’t it be nice to have at least _one_ last-ditch hail the alchemy?”

Coran pursed his lips in thought, then sighed. “As outlandish as your construction is, you have a point. Let’s get to testing.”

—

Coran yelped as his feet were doused in cold foam again.

“No, no, _no,”_ Joitree muttered as Smooshy tottered away with the foam cannister in hand. “The output calibration is _still_ off. Something’s wrong with the power nodules connected to the phase coupling. Hold still a second.”

“Yes’m.” Coran said, watching the blower collect the foam and smoke and wondering if he was going to have a prosthetic _left_ after all this. 

He had to admit, though, it was always fascinating to watch his friend at work, claws delicately picking at nodes and nodules and wires with the precision of small tools. 

“Okay,” Joitree said, raising her focus lens from her eye. “Let’s give it another go.”

Coran closed the panels, then shifted his weight to balance, the blasters angling themselves according to his thoughts the way they’d been designed to. 

Coordinate, target, and-

“ _Yes!”_ Joitree cheered when the standing hoop target Smooshy had put out was obliterated. “Perfect kullaseye!”

Coran stared. That had been… a bit more firepower than expected.

But when did Joitree ever do less?


	24. Dinner Woes

No matter how many upgrades were made to the cryopod systems and hardware, there was always an unpleasant spike of ice in the brain upon waking that made him groan. Weakly cracking his eyes open against the fading chill, Alfor turned his head to find Coran hovering beside the pod as it was raised to stand up, ready to catch him once the holding bands were released. “Was this really necessary?”

“I’ll take that to mean you don’t remember much of what happened,” Coran said, expression concerned despite the dry tone in his voice.

“I got a sore throat after dessert at the Thrakavian Consulate.”

“You lost consciousness after you stopped breathing and all your bioluminescent markings turned ultraviolet black.”

Alfor stared at him in mild horror, and was still stunned when the other man helped him stand steady after the bands let him go. “Not in front of Allura.”

“No, luckily. She was busy pestering the pilot about how the control systems worked, and once the co-pilot saw you go down, they managed to keep her distracted until the medics could keep you stable.”

“Good. That’s… that’s good.” His stomach still clenched at the thought that his daughter could have possibly seen him in such a state. Putting a hand over his mouth and swallowing hard, he allowed Coran to lead him over to a chair so one of the medics could fuss over him. Almost instinctively, he continued to lean on the other man for support even after he was seated. “Do we know what caused it?”

“It appears to have been an allergic anaphylaxis, my liege,” the medic said in her usual dispassionate tone as she touched the scanner to his throat. “After running the tests on your blood, it seems you are highly reactive to the spores the Thrakavians use to treat malaki gel.”

“Oh. Well, then.”

“A relief to know it was entirely accidental poisoning,” Coran said, and though it was obviously an attempt at a joke, the humor was just a little too dark for the situation at the moment, and Alfor shot him a look. “Sorry.”

The medic, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice or care either way, and merely finished up her scans. “Now that we know you _do_ have a potential for reactions, it might prove prudent to begin carrying a test striper.”

“A… what?”

“Oh, we had those for field duty on Delra Nine,” Coran supplied. “It’s a little device you can hide in your hand that carries a stripe of your blood, and it cycles a sample of whatever you want through it to see if there’s a reaction. We used them to test for atmospheric poisons.”

“Indeed. Though in this case, you would be testing for allergens,” the medic added as she packed away the scanners and got up. “It appears you’re clear for now, so I will hand you over to his care and have some sent up to your chambers. By your leave?”

“Yes, of course,” Alfor said, gently waving her off. The woman bowed and walked out of the room, and he laid his head in his hands with a sigh. 

“Sire?”

“A fine mess this will be.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“You saw how much the Thrakavian Consulate revolves around their food. They threatened war with the Kircians because the Matriarch insulted their cuisine. And they are not the only allies or potential allies of ours who hold cooking in such reverence. How am I to keep diplomatic matters civil if I cannot sit down to a meal?”

“Hm. A conundrum to be sure.” 

Moving to his other side, Coran sat down beside him, and Alfor shifted to rest against him again, both deep in thought. 

“Hah! I’ve got it, I think. What was that tradition from the old kingdom… the meal rite?”

Alfor sat up, raising an eyebrow at his companion. “You mean the one King Maryel instituted where his dining servant could only eat what he didn’t? Rather barbaric, isn’t it?”

“Well, we don’t have to bring it back in its exact form. I mean, menus at diplomatic dinners, have to be vetted for poison, don’t they? So that gives us a simple solution. I’ll wear the test striper of your blood to go down to the kitchens and test all of the food. Then, if there’s anything you can’t eat, you make a magnanimous gesture of allowing me to switch foods with you for the evening, and if not, we eat what we’re given. If it’s a free-for-all, I’ll warn you what not to touch.”

Alfor tugged at his beard in thought, considering the possibility. “It will have to be refined. There are some likely scenarios that need to be accounted for. But it has potential. We can try it.”

“Excellent. For now, however, I think it’s best we get you up to your chambers. I believe there’s a tiny sleeping princess who’d rather cling to her father than a pillow.”

Laughing, Alfor allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, then slung an arm around his adviser’s shoulders. “Fine, fine. But I think she’d be just as happy clinging to the both of us for awhile.”


	25. Ill Wind

The sour air that had settled over the assembled dignitaries and diplomats in the great hall of the Galra Nation’s central command ship was making the back of his neck itch. And judging by the way his companions were fidgeting, it was starting to get to them as well.

“I’ve seen more happy faces at a war tribunal than this. Or an execution, maybe,” Mirje muttered under her breath, tugging at the decorations on her formal wraparound.

“Well, Galra functions are always a bit militaristic, you know,” Coran explained. “However, I do agree that this is a bit much. According to our records, this is the most security presence ever to have been used for the Passing of the Guardianship.”

“Who are the creepy pratchkes in robes?” Joitree asked. Coran subtly leaned towards the anti-gravity hover bench she’d constructed for herself and Dracha so they could see over the crowd, and found she was surreptitiously indicating a hooded figure that hadn’t been in the spot he’d just glanced at a moment ago. “They’re popping in and out everywhere.”

“I… Well... Hm, I haven’t the faintest, actually. I’ve never seen them before. Perhaps Alfor will know when he returns.”

“Hmm, that one is staring at you.”

“What?” Coran turned his head in the direction of Dracha’s tail point, but whoever had been there had vanished. Now definitely feeling itchy, he was more than a little glad when Alfor slid back into his seat, since it meant he could at least worry about one less thing. “How is he faring?”

“I almost told him that now we were even for the potshots he took before I had to go through the Rising ceremony, but I think he would have bitten my head off if I had.”

“That bad, hm?”

“I can’t say I blame him, really. Not with the condition his father was in at the end.”

“Is it true the Brekkel tried to force a conversion on him?” Mirje asked.

“Honestly? I don’t know. Thorkesh _did_ seem to become remarkably religious of sorts in the last moons before he passed, for some reason, but it doesn’t line up with anything I’ve seen of the Brekkel faiths. And the Galra have none, so to speak. Their decree is more or less to rely on your weapon, not a god.”

“That does explain a few things, and add more questions. There have been odd robed chaps appearing and disappearing while we’ve been waiting for the ceremony to start. Seems Zarkon hasn’t kicked his father’s new gurus out yet.”

Alfor frowned faintly at that, but before they could discuss it any further, all of them and most of the diplomats jumped at a sudden thunderclap and eruption of black smoke from the dais up front. When they could see again, Zarkon had appeared in full armor, expression flat and stoic. Beside him stood a hooded woman with white hair, eyes glowing yellow out from under it.

Dracha tugged urgently on his sleeve and hissed something softly, but Coran couldn’t hear what he said over the loud ringing tone all of the Galran sentries in the room made before raising their rifles in salute. 

The motion made more than a few shuffle uncomfortably in their seats. “Since when is there a gun salute _before_ the ceremony’s over?” Coran heard a nearby Ramka snarl at her companion nervously.

“Gathered!” the woman called, raising her hands. “We are here to witness the rise of a new Sovereign!”

“ _Sovereign_?” Joitree asked, low and incredulous. “What happened to ‘Guardian’?”

“Maybe it’s just a speech change?” Coran replied, uncertain, before Dracha began pulling at his sleeve again. “What?”

“Hmm, her. _Her_. That is the staring one.”


	26. War

“Maybe… Maybe we stick to hand-to-hand weapons, alright, your highness?” Coran asked gently, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. 

On the railing behind him, Mirje hunched in a tight protective ball, tail curled to her chest where it was safe from ricochet, and Joitree clung to her shoulders, practically hiding in her mane. Dracha had _somehow_ wedged his entire body, tail and all, into one of the energy bolt containers, and was peeking out with his two left eyes to see if the coast was clear, and Zarkon, damn him, had managed to flee the room _completely_ while still keeping his dignity intact.

“Aw, but I hit the target!” Allura protested.

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

And everything and almost every _one_ else in the room before he’d managed to switch the autofire she’d _miraculously_ managed to trigger on a practice weapon - _that didn’t have it, he was absolutely positive of that-_ off. 

“But I think that might be a bit too big for you to handle right now. We’ll start staff practice instead this week, alright?” he wheedled, and she perked up at the offer of a new weapon to try, finally handing the blaster over.

“Yeah!” 

Dracha finally began to creep out of his hiding place and the two frazzled scientists came down from their perch as Coran locked the blaster away.

As he’d suspected, it _had_ no autofire mode.

Which meant he could only give a confused, defeated shrug in response to their mutual mouthed “ _How_?”

-

“The best part of electrabatons is that they are extremely versatile,” Coran said, and Allura, perched in her usual spot on the training rail, leaned forward to watch in rapt attention. “In a pinch, they can even be connected together to form a single weapon in order to give you more reach.”

With a quick click and twist, he demonstrated, sweeping the completed electrostaff around his back in a neat guard maneuver.

Perking up, Allura hopped down and grabbed her batons off the floor. “I wanna try!”

“Alright, alright. Now watch again,” he said, separating the pair to put them together again. “See the notches? Line them up, in, and twist.”

Allura dutifully copied his instructions, grinning once she was holding her very own electrostaff. “How come you never let me try this before?”

“A bit hard to swing a staff when you’re too short to measure up to it,” Coran replied with a cheeky grin, holding both staves even to her height.

“Hey!”

He deftly avoided her mock-offended punch. “Now, now, you can’t fault simple math,” he teased. “But since you _are_ tall enough, now, we’ll start with the basic drills. Follow my stances. Ready?”

“Ready!”

“Then here we go.”

-

The grin was positively evil.

“Don’t you dare.”

The grin only widened. And did her teeth just sharpen with it? 

Little fingers lashed out, seeking the small of his back, and Coran twisted away, deftly putting a good several steps of space between them.

“You’re ti~ckli~sh!” Allura sang between giggles as she danced after him, her electrabatons forgotten on the dueling floor. 

“I am _not_ and you will keep your hands to yourself, young lady!”

The chase almost became a duel in and of itself, Coran trying to keep her from getting behind him, and Allura trying just as hard to make him trip up. 

Then blue eyes sparked with mischief. “Does _Daddy_ know?”

“ _Wha- oof!”_  Completely caught by surprise, he hadn’t checked the position of the batons on the floor while backing up, and his feet whipped out from under him when he stepped on one and it went flying. His swords clattered to the floor, one barely missing his head.

To her credit, Allura immediately dropped her teasing and came running to make sure he was okay. “Oh, stars! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to-!”

Coran allowed her to pull him up to sitting, then patted her hand. “I’m fine, I’m fine. That’s what the floors are padded for, hm?” he said reassuringly, before his own smile turned wicked. “And if anyone’s going to win the war of tickles, it’s going to be _me!”_

Allura mock-shrieked as he scooped her off her feet and into a squirming, laughing embrace, the batons and his practice swords forgotten again.


	27. Singing

Normally, meditating in the gardens with Dracha was one of the few relaxing spots in the week. The Rorallan’s mind exercises had proven to work well both for Paladin training and to calm the worries he faced every day dealing with his dual roles as king and Voltron pilot. But today… today it seemed he just couldn’t get his mind to slow down and stop fretting.

Rubbing his temples in frustration, Alfor leaned back against the trunk of the tree and looked up at the rustling leaves as if they could answer his problem.

Dracha opened one of his four eyes, then unfolded himself from his meditation position. “Hmm. Your aura has a flat note today. Are you troubled?” 

Alfor tilted his head to the much smaller Paladin and tried to manage a smile. “Nothing in particular. Just work in general.”

“Oh? It has nothing to do with Sir Coran?”

Caught off guard, Alfor choked slightly on his own breath. When he’d recovered from the coughing fit, he sat up straight, eyes wide and the tips of his ears hot from embarrassment. “ _How-”_

Dracha continued to watch him placidly, two eyes open now, and he inhaled deeply, trying to calm himself down, then leaned back against the tree again. “Is it that obvious?”

“Hmm. I do not understand the question.”

“Then let me rephrase,” Alfor said, remembering to use the proper Rorallian patter. “How do you know we’re in a relationship? Do you think others can tell?”

“Hmm. Your auras sing in the particular harmony. But they sing very quietly. I believe only those looking for the sound would find it.”

Alfor considered that. It was a relief, really. They’d been so concerned about being found out, working out a complex pattern of keeping up their normal behavior… It had gotten to the point where it was almost like not being together at all. But if no one was suspecting, if it was _working,_ then maybe they could start easing up just a little behind the scenes.

But still… still… there was one thing that ate at him. “Dracha… may I ask you more about the auras you hear?”

“Hmm. Of course, my friend. You know I am always… hmm… an active datapad I believe is the term.”

Alfor closed his eyes. “Is it possible for auras to change? To move from one harmony to another? Is… is it considered bad if they do?”

Dracha closed all of his eyes again in thought. “Is it your queen that you worry about?”

He smiled sadly. “Perceptive as always.”

“Hmm, hmm. There is nothing to be done when a harmony is severed by death. But one should always have the choice to sing alone after a loss, not be condemned to it forever. One will not sour the first harmony by singing anew, nor will they polish it by punishing themselves. That is the Eternal Conductor's teaching.”

Alfor watched the breeze blow thatchia seeds through the grass, considering that, then let out a deep sigh. “It’ll still take some meditating, I think. But not today.”

“Hmm. Not today,” Dracha agreed, using his tail to heft himself to his feet. 

Thatchia seeds clung to their clothes as they walked back to the palace, and Dracha laughed at Alfor as he tried to shake the stubborn puffballs off. “Hmm. Your aura has improved somewhat.”

“Muddled thoughts aside, I do feel a little less flat,” Alfor said, then blew a seed out of his face. 


	28. Side-Eye

“You know, it’s easier to stay under the radar when you’re not hovering like an attack drone.”

Alfor glared sidelong at Mirje, who gave him an unrepentant smirk over the rim of her glass. “I’m doing nothing of the sort.”

“Oh, please. If looks could kill, the Beltremi PM would be a smoking pile of ash several times over by now.”

Surprised to hear Joitree’s voice coming from _above_ him, he turned around, and she fluttered her claws at him smugly from her perch on Smooshy’s shoulder. “You two- I am _not_ jealous.”

They continued to wear those dual infuriating smirks.

“I just… don’t understand how Coran can’t see how _obvious_ the man’s being.”

“Heh. Oh, Klaka knows.”

Alfor froze. “ _What?”_

Joitree quickly put up her hands to ward him off. “Why do you think he’s had Dracha with him to play the guileless rube at Nukili all night? The more they prattle, the less opportunity the pratchke has to get handsy.”

He blinked, then looked over at Coran again. Sure enough, every time the Beltremi Prime Minister would start to move from conversation to intimacy, the Rorallian would blithely interrupt with what looked like more questions for either him or Coran, much to Nukili’s annoyance.

Alfor felt the angry swell in his chest deflate as though it had been pricked. “Well. Don’t I feel like an idiot.”

Mirje cheerfully slung an arm around his shoulder. “Happens to the best of us, boss. Come on, let’s go raid the food before the Dumaan delegation cleans it out.”

"Oi, where's tall, dark, and shadowy? I don't see him skulking about," Joitree said as the three of them made their way through the crowd.

"As soon as Zarkon heard this was an informal affair instead of a diplomatic requirement, he none-too-politely bowed out," Alfor replied, neatly catching a piece of pikka-jam-filled bread Mirje gently lobbed at him. "You know how he is about functions with alcohol."

"He's never going to get over what happened at Depalali, is he?" Mirje snorted as she began to load up her plate. "That was almost two  _decades_ ago."

"We all have our pride points."

Joitree accepted the plate of food Smooshy handed up to her, then gave him back a roll to play with, making the robot whirr contentedly. "He  _has_ been weirder than usual lately, ever since the whole Sovereign business. Maybe he's turning into an overstressed wreck like you, Alfor."

"Gee, thanks," Alfor said dryly, though he was smiling as he deflected a teasing flick of a fippola pea from the grinning Yulnadae.

It did settle a new worry in the back of his mind, however. 

Maybe he should talk to Zarkon.


	29. Cold

“It would be best if you were more careful,” Zarkon said indicating his head in the direction of where Coran had just left with Joitree.

He raised an eyebrow. "I _am_ being careful," Alfor said, glad he didn’t feel his ears heating. He’d already had his talk with Dracha, and there had been the rather embarrassing chat with the Red and Green Paladins at the Thremishka Summit, so he shouldn’t have been surprised Zarkon already knew as well, as long as they’d known each other.

“You’re courting trouble.”

“I’m aware,” Alfor replied a little more pointedly, wondering where Zarkon was leading with this.

Zarkon held up his hands. “I am only concerned, my friend. Should you be caught, no one will care about him, but it will be _you_ that gets ruined. Can we afford that?”

“You aren’t making any arguments that I haven’t had with myself a thousand times already. Nor that Coran hasn’t already voiced,” he added when it looked as though Zarkon would argue further.

“And you’re fine with that?” Zarkon simply asked instead, a faint scowl crossing his face.

“We are.”

Zarkon nodded and turned away, but his expression seemed… oddly dark. Alfor wondered if he should ask about it, but as he reached out to touch his friend’s shoulder, Mirje called him to look at some readings instead.

Maybe later.

\---

Once.

Twice.

Again.

“We’ve been through this. Repeatedly.” Alfor was sure he could feel a migraine building, but he tamped down on the urge to rub his eyes. It seemed they were having this argument more and more often, lately. “What you’re planning is entirely too risky. The Guriri aren’t warriors, expecting them to hold the south line on their own at this point is a death sentence.”

Zarkon fixed him with a flat glare. “All too many races are demanding protection from Voltron without lifting a finger to aid themselves. If they aren’t willing, perhaps they should-”

“Should what, Zarkon? Die? I will concede that maybe we  _ should  _ be teaching more races self-defence, but not when they’re staring down the blaster barrels!”

The Galran’s eyes narrowed and he straightened from leaning on the balcony, seeming to loom in the shadows from the trees around them. “You are weakening ever more, Alfor. Perhaps you’ve been listening to your aide entirely too much.”

Alfor blinked, surprised by the sudden change in attack. “What? What does Coran have to do with any of this?”

“Even in the old days, he was too soft, too willing to throw himself on the particle grenade,” Zarkon growled, turning his gaze out to the pits below. “It seems all these years of his having your ear has caused you to inherit his undesirable traits.”

Alfor stared at the taller man, unable to speak for a moment, before he finally found his words. “What has gotten  _ into  _ you? He is your  _ friend _ . Has  _ been  _ your friend. You’ve never had a problem with his way of doing things before!”

“Well, perhaps I  _ should _ have. Because it’s clearly getting us  _ nowhere _ .” 

Coran and Dracha were quietly conversing as they entered the room, and both yelped in surprise when Zarkon shoved between them as he stormed out. “What in blazes has nested in his carapace?” Coran asked in confusion, scratching at his head. 

“Hmm, he is a very loud chorus of sour notes,” Dracha agreed.

Alfor stared at the spot where his old friend had left in a huff, a strange cold feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. “I… have no idea.”


	30. Ceremony

He didn’t know _how_ Mirje and Joitree had smuggled in their tiny ion-turret mockups. 

He wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to know.

But when Mirje had pointed out the row of five little cannons nestled among the dessert table Dracha had helped set up for the party that was hiding their true reason for meeting, Coran had almost cried. 

“Silencers on all of ‘em. If we’re gonna do this, we’re doing it in style,” Mirje had said with a conspiratorial grin, giving him a hearty thump on the back. “Wait until you see what the little goblin’s got in store.”

Careful to hide the gesture from the milling nobles, Coran wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I don’t deserve you lot.”

“You might not say that after you see how drunk we get,” Mirje teased. “Nah, don’t you worry. This is gonna go off smooth as pulla rum.”

—

Officially, the party was over. The nobles were gone, the security system was engaged, the main lights were off.

There were no priestesses, no official ear cuffs, no crowds. 

All that was left were the six of them and the holos for the Lions.

He had to admit, he was entirely impressed with what Joitree had done. Her little drone nets had been repurposed to create a glittery ambiance to replace the overhead lights. 

It was sweet. 

“Are you sure about this?” he asked Alfor softly as he took the older man’s hand. 

“Very sure,” Alfor replied, squeezing gently, before lacing their fingers together and clearing his throat. “Coran, house of Virak, you have honored me with your companionship. Will you remain by my side for all of our days, until one or both of us walk the path no more and return to the stars of our birth?”

Coran swallowed, his throat tight, then took a deep breath. “Alfor, house of Lothal, it would also be _my_ honor, and it would be my pleasure. We will journey the winding roads of life side by side, equal in measure, until the cycle of the stars calls us home.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dracha wipe a tear and Mirje and Joitree excitedly elbowing each other.

Zarkon seemed… oddly still.

Before he could dwell on it, however, a burst of little flower-shaped lights above his head made him jump.

The ion-turrets had begun their salute.

No one would know about this.

They wouldn't even be able to tell Allura.

But this... was enough, he thought with a smile as Mirje passed him a glass of Thulassa wine and Joitree and Dracha sailed past on their holochair, tossing their confetti-laden explosive pachi cakes into the air.

This was more than enough.


	31. Rebuild

Yellow made a grumbling noise in the back of his mind as he climbed down from the mouth of the big cat, and he gave his combat partner an agreeing pat on the side of the neck before jumping the last couple of feet to the ground and ripping off his helmet with a tired groan. Not the most _difficult_ of their missions as of yet, but it had been _long_ , and having to handle diplomatic talks from a cockpit had been no picnic in the gardens either.

Alfor covered his mouth to hide a wide yawn, then started to turn towards the recharging stations, before a punch to his hip knocked him off balance.

“ _Ow._ Joitree, wha-”

Grinning, Red’s pilot pointed over to the control centers. “I’ll handle the recharge, you go wake up Klaka.”

Alfor peered past Yellow’s swishing tail and, sure enough, there was no missing rumpled red hair poking up over the top of the central panel. Amusement was tinged with a bit of guilt after a moment; Coran _had_ been assisting him through all those meetings, after all. He started off in that direction instead, when Zarkon stopped him with a tight grip on the arm. “This is getting old-” he started to say jokingly.

The Galran scowled at him, apparently not seeing the humor. “We haven’t done the debriefing yet,” Zarkon cut him off, voice oddly sharp.

Behind the Black pilot’s back, Mirje and Joitree shared a look, then both rolled their eyes before Mirje swept in and hooked an arm around Zarkon’s neck, surprising him into letting go and dragging him off towards the connecting door to the castle. “At ease, general,” she drawled, casually ignoring his attempts to swat her off as Dracha followed them, chuckling. “We’re all tired and you can fuss in the morning.”

Alfor silently mouthed his thanks to Joitree, and she gave him a cheery salute and headed to the recharging stations to look after the Lions. Finally free, he crossed the hangar to the control stations at the other connecting door.

Coran had evidently fallen asleep in the middle of some form of calculations, face lit by several datapads he was snoozing on. Or _in_ , in the case of the hologram windows. Gently, carefully, Alfor slid them out from under his head one by one and saved the holograms back into the pads before shutting them down. Then after making sure no one was around to see -well, besides the Lions or Joitree, but they were occupied anyway- he bent down and brushed an affectionate kiss against his sleeping partner’s temple.

“ _Mrph._ Oh, hello.”

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Ugh, is it really?” Coran asked, trying to sweep his hair back into some semblance of order as he groggily sat up.

“No. Still four cycles to go. But we just arrived back.”

“Waking people in the middle of the night? How terrible of you,” Coran teased sleepily, catching hold of a gauntleted hand and pressing a kiss to his fingers.

“If I’d let you sleep in that chair, you would have been grouching even louder later,” Alfor retorted with a smile, using their linked hands to pull him up. “Come on, old man.”

“You’re never going to let that go, are you? It’s been _years_ since the Loumika consul thought I was older than you.”

“I intend to carry it to our graves," Alfor replied mock loftily. "Especially now that you’ve grown that ridiculous mustache."

“Says the man who came home starting to sport a grandpa beard. Better watch it or Allura might not recognize you in the morning.”

Alfor elbowed his partner lightly and Coran responded with a dig in the ribs of his own. Both of them were laughing by the time the lift arrived at the den floor, though they shushed when they stopped by Alfor’s room.

“And speaking of which…” Coran said, smiling at the sleeping figure curled up in a chair by the door. Crouching down, he gently shook the princess. “Allura, guess who’s home.”

“Mrrrmmnh… m’sleepin’,” she muttered fuzzily, scrunching up into a smaller ball and making her hair fall in her face.

“Maybe later, then,”  Alfor said. When the sound of his voice got no reaction, Coran shrugged, then carefully wormed Allura out of her ball and onto his back, arms draped around his neck in a carry position. “Good night, you two.”

“Good night, sire,” Coran said, palace staff mask back in place as he bowed slightly and carried Allura off towards her room.

Alfor watched them go. Absently, he found himself thinking several months back to his conversation with Dracha about harmonies. About family and love and second chances.

And being lucky enough to get one.


	32. Cracks

He couldn’t make out the words, but he could hear them yelling after just stepping out of the lifts, Hebe and Turimi, one of the maids, at his heels. “Ladies, maybe you two should-”

“-and perhaps if you had focused more on guarding your _people_ than these _ridiculous_ trade agreements, you would still have a _Queen!”_

The tray of cups Turimi had been holding crashed to the ground as her hands flew to her mouth, and Hebe was openly gaping at the door down the hall. Equally stunned, a cold lance of shock in his chest, Coran knew he was staring as well, but he couldn't make himself move.

Surely…

Surely Zarkon had _not…_

Not _that_ line…

He hadn't crossed  _that_ line...

“Cousin?” Hebe asked, visibly shaking as she held her datapad up to her face, trying to hide the tears that were starting to form.

“You two-” Coran swallowed, getting his voice clear, then squared his shoulders and straightened his back. “You two go back to the kitchens, tell Aunt Micelle that I said you could have some Cepriken Tea. I’ll call a droid up to clean up the cups. _Tell no one_ what you heard, understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Aye, cousin.”

The both of them fled back into the lift, and Coran was left standing in the terrible blanket of silence that had fallen over the hallway. Ignoring the tremor in his own hands, he screwed up his courage and went to the door, preparing to knock-

-when it swished open on its own, and he was faced with the icy sneer of Zarkon. “On cue, the _pet_ arrives,” the Galra Sovereign rumbled, shoving past him with surprising force. 

What in sheraiz, Coran thought, watching him go, before more pressing concerns took precedence. Slipping into the room, he stopped short when he saw Alfor.

His king, his _partner,_  stood hunched over his desk, head bowed and hands clutching the edge as though he were to throw the entire piece of furniture. Tension lined every inch of his spine, hummed in the air, and though his hair hid his face, Coran could feel the rage seeping off him. 

And there were tear spots growing on the glowing screens below. Coran didn't need to look to see what image had been opened in the wake of Zarkon's leaving. 

He knew. 

He'd stared at that same picture in the night, asking her sometimes if he was making the right decisions.

Silently cursing the Black Paladin in the back of his mind, Coran ran to catch the other man as his anger broke and his sorrow took hold.


	33. Man Down

Mirje hissed through gritted fangs as Coran gently applied salve to the burn around her eye. “This is bad. Really bad,” she muttered,” the tip of her tail twitching in agitation as she nervously extended and retracted her claws, worrying the sponge he’d given her to hold into little shreds. “They’ve never argued like this before.”

Coran made a noncommittal noise, but inwardly he agreed, glancing at his king and the Black Paladin out of the corner of his eye as he tended to the Green Paladin’s injuries. Alfor was mussed and bloody, the right arm of his yellow-decorated armor cracked. Zarkon was surprisingly unscathed for the battle the team had returned from, but was in a towering rage about _something_ Coran couldn’t hear from this distance, and the miasma of anger was almost becoming palpable as the two snapped back and forth. 

“- if he _is_ the leader.”

“Sorry?” Coran asked, turning his attention back to Mirje.

“I said Zarkon’s been getting all high and mighty on our missions lately. Deciding who we can and can’t save, like there’s some kind of… I don’t know, like they have to _deserve_ it. Sending us into warzones for seemingly nothing. Like he’s _testing_ us for something. It’s really getting to everyone, even if he _is_ the leader.”

“Is that what Alfor’s been getting on him about?”

“Yeah. You know his majesty, always sticking up for the little guy.”

“Hm.” He finished cleaning up the last of the burns, then sat back on his heels. “Well, at least on the good side, you’ll have those patches of fur back by starshine.”

“That _is_ good news. How’s the little goblin?”

“Joitree’s still in cryo, I’m afraid.”

Mirje spat on the floor in disgust at that, some blood mixed in it from a cracked fang. “Hope Alfor rips him good, then. This entire mission was nothing but a pile of Lichatka shit,” she muttered, then heaved herself to her feet to go see how Dracha was faring. The smaller alien was clearly having problems tending to the gashes on his tail.

Coran watched her go, then shook his head and got up, grabbing the small field medic kit before cautiously approaching the arguing warriors and clearing his throat. “I beg your pardon, sire, but you really should let me take a look at your head and arm.”

“What? Oh. Of course, Coran.” Though his expression gave away nothing, the subtle change in the tension of his liege’s body hinted at Alfor’s relief for the interruption of the fight as he obligingly shed the cuirass and arm guards.

Zarkon, if anything, only seemed angrier as he backed off, jaw and fists clenched as he watched them through slitted eyes and seethed. 

“Right…” he growled under his breath, chest heaving with each inhale. “She was right… you are all… _so…. **weak!”**_

It was pure reactive instinct. He’d trained to do it a hundred thousand times. 

He’d even had to put it into practice once or twice for the errant assassin. 

Right foot step forward, right arm sweep to generate shield, left hand to pistol. 

Bring up, fire.

But he’d never had to do it against an opponent with such raw strength, let alone behind the power of a bayard. The particle shield shattered as if it were nothing, and white-hot pain seared through Coran’s shoulder and chest, followed by numbing coldness. The sight of Zarkon’s enraged, snarling face shifted, blurred, then turned on its side and was followed up by the sight of the hanger ceiling as he was vaguely aware of hitting the floor.

" ** _Coran!_  **"

“- _glories-”_

_“-_ hanger closed, don’t let him-”

"Come back here, traitor!"

“Coran!”

“-away from the king-”

“-get him to the-”

“ _Dammit!”_

Coran’s vision was starting to go grey at the edges when Alfor’s face swam into view. “Coran, stay with me. We’re going to get you to a cryo chamber. Do you hear me? Stay _with m_ -”

 


	34. Counting

“Twenty-one came back from the search mission today, sire.”

“Out of how many that left?”

Coran said nothing, but seemed to find the dust on the window frame very interesting all of a sudden and held his datapad a little more tightly against his chest, and that was all the answer he really needed to give.

The search and rescue missions outside of the castle’s protective shield were not only futile, they were _deadly_. He knew that. Those who volunteered for them knew that. But he found he couldn’t turn down their hope, no, their _desperation_ that someone they knew might have somehow survived the Galran bombardment.

If it had been Coran or Allura, he never would have stopped looking either.

“Have they gone through decontamination and rejoined the quarantine?”

“Yes, sire.”

“That will be all, then. I’ll visit the kitchens in a cycle to see how the stores are holding for everyone.”

“With all due respect, your majesty, you might use that cycle to get some rest. You’ve been on your feet almost since the disaster.”

“You might take your own advice, old man,” he managed to tease his partner tiredly, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed. “I know you’ve been in and out of the quarantine like a ukkiki with its tail on fire.”

Coran gave him a wry smile. “Yes, well, I suppose one never gets rid of the habit of running things after doing it for years. And someone has to keep Auntie’s med kits filled quick enough for her temper.”

Alfor shuddered. “I’d rather be facing down a battleship than your aunt in a rage. I’ll leave you to it.”

—

He was fending off black market trader transmissions -the utter _nerve_ of the ipickis, thinking he would sell his people into _slavery_ to get them off the planet- when the private channel that he and Allura used began beeping softly. Not giving half a poc about being polite at the moment, he cut off the trader mid-word to open up the comm. “What is it, dearest?”

“Da- Father… I think you might need to get Coran out of quarantine,” Allura said softly, and even through the protective masking of the suits the medical assistants had to wear, he could see tear streaks on her face.

“Allura, what’s wrong?” Alfor asked, instantly concerned. “Is he hurt? What happened?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but all that came out was a small hiccup before she turned away. In her place moved Nurse Prichel, wearing the same protective gear and also looking worse for the wear. “Sire, it’s… it’s Micelle. One of the recovered scratched through her suit after the last mission and she was contaminated. She… We lost her this morning.”

Alfor felt his stomach drop. “I’m on my way.”

The guards handling the decontamination and medical gear were surprised to see him, but outfitted him nonetheless when ordered, and he made his way into the dining hall that had been repurposed for those who’d been exposed to the Galra weapon radiation, the poisonous air left in their wake, and the solar radiation from the destruction of the atmosphere. All around were the dead waiting to be released to the stars, the dying waiting to join them, and the medical staff desperately trying to save those they could.

And in the far corner, Coran sat by a sheet-covered body in his gear, holding a pale, still hand. Alfor swallowed when he recognized the long graying braids that spilled from under the sheet. “Coran.”

The other man stiffened, then raised his head and looked over his shoulder, expression hollow. “Your majesty, you shouldn’t be in here. You could-”

Alfor shook his head and pulled over an unused stool, sitting by his advisor. His partner. He leaned in shoulder to shoulder, the motion unnoticeable as anything other than a friend lending aid to a grieving friend to anyone who looked. “No, I definitely should.”

Coran lowered his head again, leaning in as well in acknowledgement of the gesture. “She was hardy as a damyan, you know? I never would have thought- never… I never thought-” His voice choked in his throat, and Alfor subtly took hold of the hand that wasn’t clinging to his aunt’s.

“They’re all _gone_ now, Alfor… they’re all gone…”

—

“There aren’t any possibilities for a miscalculation? You’re absolutely sure?”

“We’ve run the numbers repeatedly, your majesty. The likelyhood that the coronal mass ejection will miss Altea is less than two per cent. And with the amount of atmosphere we have left, the chance of survival is-”

“I understand,” Alfor said quietly, then sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. _‘Damn you, Zarkon,’_   he thought, bitterness seeping from every word. He couldn't say _how_ he knew that the Galra were somehow responsible for this new cataclysm, but he just  _knew._ Their former friend couldn’t just wait for them to die out on their own, could he?

Well, to the gritka pits with _that_. They still had _one_ avenue of survival left to them. “I want the retrieval alarms sounded, full volume. Three hours.”

“Sire?”

“Anyone out on search has three hours to return. After that, we begin preparations for the castle to launch.”

—

The howling screeches of the alarms overhead had stopped, and what few technicians were still capable of working were bustling about the engine room as fast as they could get their calculations in order.

Allura stood quietly beside him, and when he felt fingers catch hold of his sleeve, he offered his hand to let her take hold. “Everything alright, dearest?”

“Nervous,” she admitted. “I’m… going to miss home.”

He gave her hand a squeeze. “So will I, dearest. So will I.”


	35. Broken

The trip from the cryochamber room to his bedroom seemed to take ages. The lift felt suffocatingly small, almost _claustrophobic_  around him, and by the time it stopped at the correct floor, Alfor was heaving painfully for breath, clutching at his chest as he plodded down the hall. 

Only once safely sequestered in his room could he breathe again, and he sucked in a sharp, cold lungful of air before leaning back against the closed doors and squeezing his eyes shut. 

Allura had looked so small in that chamber as Coran had activated it. 

He put his face in his hands and raked his hair back out of his eyes, releasing the transformation illusion he'd been holding for days as he did so. The scars over his blind right eye and down the side of his face and neck, cracking his bioluminescence, became visible. ‘Gifts’ from a bayard that had once been a friend’s. ‘Gifts’ just like the transmission droid that had arrived three hours before Zarkon’s declaration of intent.

Alfor pulled the tiny black robot out of a pocket of his robes and stared at it. 

It made a satisfying _crack_ as it shattered against the wall opposite the room, but the feeling was only momentary before the bleak coldness settled back in, and he slowly pulled himself away from the doors and crossed the floor to sit on the bed, hanging his head.

“Sire?”

He hadn’t heard the doors open and close, nor did he know how long he’d been sitting there in the dark, but Alfor raised his head to find Coran had arrived with food. “Coran,” he said quietly, voice rough. “Not now.”

“Alright, if you’re not hungry, I can come back la-”

“ _No._ No, that’s-” Alfor found himself lost for words for a moment and just vaguely tried to gesture for the other man to sit on the bed with him. Apparently catching on, Coran put the tray aside on one of the desks and complied. Alfor laid his head on his partner’s shoulder with an exhausted sigh that dredged up from deep inside him and Coran squeezed his hand tight.

“Don’t… Don’t. Not the formalities. Not now.” Alfor made a pained, bitter chuckle that was more like a rattle in his chest. “There isn’t anyone to care now.”

He couldn’t see Coran’s expression, but he felt the other man stiffen, then calm, other arm wrapping around him, drawing him in as if to hold him together. Maybe he was, in a way. “Well, then, if we’re being informal- you need to sleep, Alfor. You look like a trampak walked on you.”

That startled a more genuine laugh out of him, the strained tension down his back finally easing the smallest bit. “Fair enough.”

—

“Are you really sure about this?”

They stood together in the lions’ hangar, the great mechanical beasts quietly sleeping. Red and Green had both refused to wake ever since Joitree and Mirje had been killed, and Blue… well…

“We don’t have any other choice,” Alfor said softly, gently putting a hand on Blue’s paw. “I didn't want to bring it up in front of Allura, but Zarkon’s pet witch sent me a transmission before he contacted me officially. Roralla… Roralla is gone. All evacuating ships eliminated.”

Dracha… all his kin… Just like the others.

Coran froze in the middle of his calculations and stared at him in wide-eyed incredulity over his datapad. “ _Gone?_ But how could they- _why_ -?”

“For the same reason they destroyed the Yulnadae Home Station. The same reason they’ve been hunting down every Orichian clan across the galaxies. The same reason they burned the surface of our homeworld to ash. Zarkon wants to make sure there are no possible replacement pilots for the lions.”

“But- but we know that’s not how they _work_. The lions choose-”

Alfor looked over at Yellow, and the Lion roused, raising her head just a little with a low rumble. He was sure his old friend felt just as drained as he did. “Do you think he _cares_ what the lions want at this point?”

Coran made a small, despairing noise beside him, then switched his datapad from the checks he’d been running to star systems. “No. Probably not," he mumbled. "So… where should we start?”

“They started with Joitree,” Alfor said, turning away from the lions to begin scrolling through the pinpoints of light that had emerged from the little screen. “So we begin with Red.”


	36. Regrets

_“Alfor, the proximity alerts are going haywire! You’ve got to get back to the ship!”_

He could hear the alarms through the comm. Coran had called him two hours ago that there was a Galran convoy passing through the planetary system, but then his partner had been optimistic that they would be overlooked.

Alfor had known better.

Zarkon was coming.

He could feel it.

He took a deep breath. He’d spent the last two hours getting all of the Nothatchans within battle range to hiding places were they wouldn’t be caught in any crossfire, and now there was just one thing left to do.

One thing he wished so badly he didn’t have to do.

Alfor closed his eyes and tapped his comm, holding the transporter control tightly against his chest. “Coran?”

_“Yes, sire?”_

“Take care of Allura for me.”

_“I- **what?!** Alfor, what are you-”_

The metal of the transporter control creaked as his hand clenched. “I love you both. Now go!”

_"Alfor, don't you **da-** "_

He felt the surge of power through his body as the remote activated the wormhole gate. It was brief, cold, leaving a deep, yawning emptiness almost as bleak as the dark void in the back of his mind that heralded the landing of the Galran ship on the cliff nearby.

Squaring his shoulders and drawing himself up to his full height, Alfor drew his sword and turned to face the opening gateway.

—

Dozens of sentries and dead soldiers littered the ground, scorch marks pocking the grass and sparse trees. Amongst the debris and bodies, Alfor, last King of Altea, knelt, leaning on his broken sword and bleeding sluggishly from wounds where blaster fire had succeeded in breaking through his armor.

Zarkon stood over him, unwounded,

Alfor glanced at all of the destroyed robots and wasted soldiers that had obeyed their leader's command, then glared up at the Galran Sovereign. Was this the same anger that Mirje had felt when their former friend had refused to face _her_ in fair combat, he wondered. 

But only for a moment.

As the blade formed and the Black Bayard raised, Alfor closed his eyes one last time.

_Allura was safe._

_Coran was safe._

_The Lions were safe._

They would carry on, he was sure. 

They would succeed where he had failed. 

And that was all that was important.

The blade came down.


	37. Drifting

Slowly he slumped to the floor, then huddled back against the controls, resting his head against his knees as the words echoed in his skull.

‘ _I love you both. Now go!’_

No amount of trying to reconfigure the commands had been able to reopen the wormhole Alfor had remote-triggered. There just hadn’t been enough energy left in the cores. 

And now Alfor was gone.

Dead, on some distant planet, having stayed behind to make sure the Yellow Lion remained hidden and to buy time for the castle ship to escape with its sole living cargo aboard.

His throat aching and his chest cold, Coran remained in a ball by the control panel for he didn’t know how long. What was there even left for him to do? The Paladins and his liege were dead, Altea had been razed to a lifeless wasteland, the Lions were gone-

A soft beeping dredged him up from the depths of his stupor, and he slowly dragged himself to his feet to find that the alert was a warning from the cryochamber room that temperatures were rising too high.

Allura.

Allura was still there. Allura still needed to be looked after.

—

With no wormhole capability to flee in a pinch, Coran had to be especially careful about plotting course. He’d pulled up every single one of Joitree and Mirje’s old exploration maps, seeking out their contacts who could give him intel on where the Galra had taken root and what lanes were still safe.

He was being singleminded, he knew.

It was better than letting his thoughts wander.

He estimated he had done three months of searching when a planet name came up on his proximity alert that twigged something in his memory. Arus.

Arus…

Queen Illyere used to love the singing fountains there, hadn’t she? 

That had been before the Paladins’ time. Before _Zarkon’s_ time. 

Clenching his jaw, Coran pulled up the maps and ran the references. Sure enough, the Empire had yet to touch the pretty little blue world. Mind made up, he set the landing protocols and engaged the back thrusters to bring the castle down once he’d mapped a spot that looked suitable.

Leaving central command for what felt like the first time in days, he was momentarily at a loss for what to do. The emptiness of the castle seemed oppressive all of a sudden. 

Maybe the cryochamber rooms needed cleaning again.

—

It was another three weeks before he admitted to himself that he was stalling. Perhaps some part of him had been holding out hope that he had been wrong yet and Alfor would contact the castle. 

Or maybe he just didn’t want to spend nights _and_ days with the nightmares he’d been having every time he tried to get a little sleep.

Still, he couldn’t keep running away from it forever. Someone had to be there for Allura when she awoke. He had a promise to keep. So after one last tour of the castle to make sure everything was in proper working order, he set the auto-controls on the pod next to hers and walked out into the chamber.

“I hope you’re having good dreams, sweetbug,” he said fondly, giving her pod an affectionate pat, then stepped into his own and took a deep breath of the tranquilizing chemicals as the glass closed around him and everything faded grey, then black.

For his own part, he thought as sleep claimed him, he rather hoped he didn’t have any at all.


	38. Digging Up Bones

“You look tired, old man.”

Coran jerked away from the relay station he was repairing, nearly dropping the mini electro-solder tool in his hand. Managing to recover from almost setting his clothes on fire, he turned his head to find the king’s AI watching him with a sharp sort of interest. “Alfor. Pardon my shock, sire, but I wasn’t aware you could travel the castle.”

“Allura thought it was necessary to update my parameters so that I could better assist her.”

Oh, well, that seemed reasonable enough. “What brings you by?”

A hand reached out and brushed his face. It sent an odd tingling through his skin, the feeling of hard light where flesh had once been. “How long have you been taking care of the castle alone?” Alfor asked, soft and worried. “Don’t you remember what I said when I asked you to my side? This place can’t be handled by one.”

Coran bit his lip, then looked away. “We both know I don’t exactly have a choice right now, Alfor. The others help where they can, but they just don’t have the experience or the right technical knowledge. In a few months-”

“And you can go without resting that long?” A thumb pressed in just below his eye, startling him into releasing his masking transformation. “You need sleep, old man.”

“I can-”

Alfor’s gaze took on a strange, hard tone, and the grip on his face tightened painfully. “You should sleep, Coran,” he said, voice flat and cold, and Coran stiffened in fear as he heard the vents begin to hiss.

\---

The pieces of the core chamber still lay scattered on the floor where they had shattered. He kept telling himself he’d get up and sweep them into the incinerator chute.

In just a few more minutes. 

Resting his elbows on his knees, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the glass cana in his hand, letting the chill ease the ache building in his skull.

“Planning on opening that?”

The voice behind him made him jump, and he turned his head, quickly trying to hide the still-sealed liquor as Allura approached. “Your highness! You should be in bed.”

“So should you,” Allura said with a small smile, fluffing out the skirts of her nightgown as she sat down beside him and folded her arms over her stomach before leaning against him. “I’m not really surprised you’re here instead, though. You probably miss him even more than I do.”

He gently ruffled her hair with a smile. “You know that’s not possible, little miss papa’s girl,” he teased gently. “I remember how much you sulked the first mission he took after Yellow chose him. You even kicked Yellow’s paw when they got back, you were so angry with her for taking your papa away.”

Allura made a scandalized noise. “I did _not_!”

“You did indeed. She yowled like she’d been shot by a battleship.” Coran’s smile grew a touch sadder. “Your father and the others laughed like they’d burst. Even… _him_.”

Biting her lip, Allura took hold of his hand and squeezed. “It’s not fair,” she mumbled quietly. 

“It’s not,” he agreed, squeezing back. 

They sat in silence for several minutes, just holding on to each other and staring at the destroyed core, then Allura grumbled something he didn't hear under her breath and reached over Coran, grabbing the cana out of her surprised guardian’s hand. Before he could react, she cracked the seal and took a quick swig, coughing at the taste.

“What- _Princess!”_

 _“_ If you’re going to open it, you’re going to share,” she said, offering it back. “I’m old enough.”

“ _Still-”_

She continued to hold it out, the meaning in her expression plain. After they’d stared each other down for several seconds, Coran sighed and took it, the agreement between them going unspoken. 

“Where did you even find this?”

“Mirje’s private stash survived in the kitchens,” Coran said, turning the cana in his hands as he regarded it with a fond look, then took a drink of his own. “You know how she felt about Altean wines.”

“Like drinking flavored water, she always said,” Allura murmured. “I remember that.” She reclaimed her spot snuggled against her guardian’s side and swiped the cana for another sip. “Tell me more stories about Father and the other Paladins that I don’t remember.”

“Hm, how about the one where the Queen of the Mipici Hive nearly married your father?”

Perhaps due a little to the alcohol buzz -Orichian spirits worked fast after all- Allura started laughing at the very thought. “She didn’t!”

“Indeed she did! All right, so it started out like this. Zarkon had found some intel on a slave colony out at Glarpec Four…”


	39. Path Not

“-ran? Coran!”

His head was throbbing when he cracked one eye open. But rather than searing pain he had been expecting, he felt… soft? Cradled? He couldn't think of the right word to describe it.

Coran weakly raised his head and found himself in what seemed to be a copse of some sort of flower vines. Bluish pollen dust coated his clothes and hair, and when he stirred more up trying to push himself up onto his knees, he sneezed.

Above him, laughter filtered through the noises of the birds in the trees.

He froze.

He hadn’t heard that laugh in-

A hand appeared in his field of vision to help him up, and he stared at it dumbly for several seconds before looking up.

“Are you just going to sit there in the lillika knots forever?”

She had more of the pale pink streaks that had sprouted in her hair after Allura had been born, and the markings under her eyes had evolved with age, changing shape slightly to something even more exotic. But… but it was _her_.

Even though it _couldn’t_ be her.

“Illyere?” Coran asked, voice so weak that it was barely audible even to his own ears. “How... how are you _here?_ ”

The vision in front of him arched an eyebrow, mouth quirking slightly in an expression he still knew so well. “We all got here with Yellow nine cycles ago dear; are you alright?”

Yellow? The Yellow Lion? Feeling sick with confusion, Coran raked a hand through his hair, trying to make sense of his thoughts. He remembered a maze of caves - the Paladins - Allura - a mission - … what…

Illyere touched his shoulder with an expression of concern and, almost on reflex, he yanked her down, wrapping her in a fierce hug as he buried his face in her shoulder. “Illyere… am I dead? Is that where we are?”

“You’re starting to worry me, Coran,” she said, gently pushing him back to check his eyes. “Did you fall? Were there any pichal spores in the flowers?” She took off her gloves and cupped his chin in her hands, and he thought he might cry at the familiar prick of her claws against his skin. “You don’t feel feverish-”

“No,” he rasped. “I don’t- it was… just a nightmare, I think. It was just a nightmare.”

“All the same, might be best if you rest a bit and don’t go exploring again for awhile. Come on.” She stood, dusting pollen from her skirts and offered a hand again. “I’m sure Allura’s played herself into an appetite by now.”

He swallowed, still feeling strange and confused and kind of dizzy, but let her pull him up and link their arms together and they picked their way out of the vines and headed off, presumably back down the path she’d come to find him. A blur of bright green flashed past his vision, and he turned his head to see an Emerald Tirpaeki Bird land on a nearby branch, fluffing out its four wings at them in a threat display. “Arus? We’re back on Arus?”

“Oh, are you starting to get your bearings back?”

Except… he was sure Tirpaeki of all colors were extinct now, weren’t they? The updated computer sweeps on Arus had said so. They had died out when…

When the…

“Aipa! Mama, you found him!”

The dizzy feeling washed back over him in force, making his legs buckle as Allura, looking barely as old as when she’d first begun her training, ran out from under an archway, a hard light miniature holo of Yellow on her heels.

_Aipa… Second Father… What was going **on** …? _

“Allura, sweetbug, go get your papa, would you? Aipa Coran came across something on his walkabout that left him not feeling well,” Illyere said, her hold on him subtly tightening to keep him on his feet.

The little princess - _his_ little princess?- gave him a look of worried confusion, but nodded and vanished around a corner, and Illyere pulled him over to sit on a large chunk of stone.

“I don’t understand what's happening,” he mumbled weakly.

“What’s the matter, old man? You get attacked by marchak venom?” - _That voice-_ The question was joking, but the concern was real, and as another pair of hands -strong, warm, _familiar_ hands that _couldn’t be there_ \- settled on his shoulders to hold him steady, it seemed like his mind was falling apart for a moment.

_“Alfor?”_

“I’m here. We’re all here. We’ve got you. Yellow, run a diagnostic on him, would you?”

The holo rumbled an affirmative, and Coran watched her as she sprouted several little screens, all of them directed at him. He did remember this protocol from medics, and let Illyere take off his left glove for a tiny blood sample.

“Looks like we were _both_ off, darling,” Illyere said, reading the results screen. “It’s not pichal _or_ marchak. A vikapal must have bitten him in his sleep.”

“Damn. Nothing to do for _that_ but let it work its way out of the system. Sorry, old man. Looks like you’re going to be feeling rotten for awhile.”

“No, no, my own damn fault,” Coran said with a pathetic little laugh, relief flooding him so fast it almost made him nauseous. The nightmares, the confusion, the memory dazes, it all made sense now. “Should have paid better attention to my surroundings before I crashed.”

“Does that mean we have to go home?” Allura asked, peeking over the rock he was resting on.

“After all the work it took to get us all a day off? Not a chance, dolly,” Alfor replied, ruffling her hair affectionately. “We’ll just have to change plans a bit.”

“What... was the original plan, again?” Coran asked as the other adults helped him up, bracing him on either side.

“Well, we were going to take dinner up into the ruins for the sunset,” Illyere said. “But I see no reason not to just eat among the fountains. We can see the stars just as well and their music is prettier at night anyway.”

The fountains… the singing fountains? That was what he had been trying to think of earlier, wasn’t it? The Tirpaeki had… had died out when the fountains had… dried…

Another wave of nausea surged in his head and he was very glad that his partner… _partners_ … were they… both?... were there to hold him up.

“Easy does it,” Alfor said, and when the world had stopped spinning, Coran found himself seated comfortably on a hologenerated cushion by a sleeping Yellow’s paw. “You just take a break and let us set up.”

“Sure,” he mumbled, watching as the three and Yellow’s holo bustled about, unpacking the meal that had been brought along. Food smells made his stomach rumble; nightmares of half-starvation and years spent on emergency rations seemed to magnify the scents of picallel soup and nidi meat sandwiches until they filled his head.

“Ready, Aipa?”

“You bet.” He only barely managed to keep from inhaling the first sandwich like a starving riitmek snake. The soup was easier to handle since all of them just drank from the heated bottles, but even then, the flavor that his mind told him he had missed for _so long_ made him want to cry.

“Glories, I hope I’ll be over this soon,” he muttered, and Illyere gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze while Alfor settled a heavy, comforting hand on the back of his neck.

It felt… incredible. It wasn’t even anything, really, just small affectionate gestures, but…

Illyere doled out ollala berry chew-sweets and juyna sodas for dessert, and as he watched her try to keep Allura from putting sweets in one of her sodas to see what would happen and Alfor laughing at them both as he wrapped an arm around Coran's shoulders, he felt the soft swell in his chest.

This… this was _right_.

This was perfect.

This was-

 _“-ran? Coran?!_ **_Coran!_ ** _”_

Pain blazed through his heart, through his head, and Coran doubled over, clutching at his chest.

“Aipa!”

“Coran! Stars, are you alright?!”

“I- I don’t know,” he wheezed, trying to get air through a throat that suddenly seemed too tight. “It- it came out of nowh-"

“ _Coran, please!”_

Searing, lightning-strike pain, as if something was trying to tear its way _out_ of him from his core out through his hands, and he _screamed_ and kept screaming until his throat was raw as his vision went white, then grey-

-and then dark blue, as the greens of old Arus were suddenly enclosed and smothered by the darkness of a cave. For a moment, Coran thought he’d gone completely deaf, as he could hear nothing at all, and then…

Soft sobbing.

“Coran! Thank fates you got him out!”

Out?

As numbness gave way to feeling again, he was aware of being tightly squeezed and wetness on his shoulder.

Allura?

It _was_ Allura. But not the small, bright-spark, playful princess he’d just spent an afternoon with. Clutching him like he might shatter was the tall commander of the Paladins. The one who had-

Feeling strange and confused and kind of dizzy, Coran raised his head a little and found the Paladins themselves standing over the pair of them as they knelt on the cave floor, looking no less stressed and upset and relieved all at once. In some kind of protective bag between them, Keith and Hunk were carrying a glowing blue orb.

He’d seen that before… hadn’t he?

“What happened?” he asked, voice croaking like he’d just been dragged out of a coma.

“You don’t remember?” Shiro asked, looking even more concerned, and Allura sat back on her heels with a similar expression, wiping her eyes. Coran shook his head, and he bit his lip. “You…. It was…You had-”

“It was my fault,” Keith said quietly. “They warned us not to touch the orb without the bag, something about it... eating _minds_ , but I knocked it loose while trying to deal with some Galra sentries and you… caught it.”

“We barely managed to use the bag to get it back,” Hunk said, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand. “You were holding on to that thing like your life depended on it.”

“Oh.” Maybe he should have had more of a reaction than that, but he just felt… cold. Exhausted. Something he couldn’t describe. “Are we done, then? Back to the castle?”

The six of them traded glances of varying degrees of heightened worry, but Allura finally nodded. “We can go. We’ll deliver this to the elders on the way. Maybe they can look you over and make sure the orb didn’t have any averse effects as well?”

“Fine,” he mumbled, unsteadily getting to his feet, and didn’t protest when she insisted he lean on her. If it meant getting out of the caves sooner, then… fine.

They had made it through three rooms and several minutes of uncomfortable silence when Pidge finally broke the one question he knew they were going to ask and the one question he didn’t want to answer. “What did you see in there?”

His stomach knotted sourly at the thought.

A family that never happened.

A love that never blossomed.

A happiness he would never know.

“Just a nightmare, I think. It was just a nightmare.”


	40. Old Ghosts

“- and it was kind of a weird thing when I found ‘em. Like, they weren’t in the normal communications relays, they were stored in a heavily encrypted subsystem. That’s why I wanted you to be here when I started opening them up, just in case they turned out to be something we could use against the Galra.”

“Fair enough. Let’s get cracking, then.”

The connection crackled and fuzzed, the image full of static like an old tulorra disc, but with some fiddling, it slowly began to come together. Coran paused when black and white gave way to brilliant color, the deep reds, yellows, and pinks of a magma-lit chamber full of glowing screens and floating tubes filtered into view. 

But it was when sound finally rose from the depths of the echoing sparks and reverb that he went very still.

_ “I  _ **_know,_ ** _ Kl-/ /-ormally, I’d be-/ /- _ **_out_ ** _ questionable edibles, but I just  _ **_can’t_ ** _. The Council wants this done by the end of the next Station rotation and you  _ **_know_ ** _ how those ol-/ /-n be.”  _

Her hair was longer than usual when she appeared on the screen, hopping with well-practiced ease from one miniature floating platform to another over the magma, trailed by dozens of little datapads and her ever-loyal massive robotic lab assistant. She never looked at the communications camera, busily toiling at a hundred calculations with one claw and tying her hair in a knot with the other, but her voice was clear over the little earpiece that was nearly hidden by a long ear.

_ “Ugh, don’t even  _ **_remind_ ** _ me. I  _ **_know_ ** _ Ponakka totally picked me for this project as revenge for showing him up at the last symposium. I mean, he’s not admitting it or anything so I can’t prove it, but that’s just the way he  _ **_works_ ** _.” _

“Coran?” He didn’t realize how tightly he was clutching the wire splicers until Pidge carefully pried them from his hand. “You… okay there, bud?”

“I’m-”

“ _ Klaka, don’t be like that. I’m gonna make him eat his words, just wa- oh, thank you, Smooshy.”  _

He remembered this. The fifteenth Binary Moon Festival after the Paladins had come together. Joitree had been growing her hair out for an Altean formal function, only to have to back out altogether because of home scientifics. He  _ knew _ this conversation.

“- _ think so… oh, wait! If the vendor that sells those Julpara Sweet Cream Orbs is there this year, get me a jar of those, hey? And tell Paladin Hammer Head that if she eats them, I’m gonna have Smooshy stuff her tail in a micro black hole.”  _ She actually fist-bumped her robot, which got a snort of laughter from Pidge, before she resumed skimming her claws over a series of floating light screens.  _ “ _ **_Yes,_ ** _ I’m kidding, Klaka. Look, get her a rack of roasted Kirikikki Horns on me, okay? No, the fire seasoning ones. She likes those enough that maybe she’ll stay out of my junk food. I’ll pay you back in Ultaka Chips at the next symposium. Deal?” _

The wide grin on her face and the way she punched the air, same as he’d seen her do a hundred thousand times, made his chest ache even as he smiled back. 

_ “You’re a gem, Klaka. See you after I rub this in Ponakka’s big ugly nose. _ ”

The transmission sparked out, leaving only the glowing encoded keys and wires they’d used to dig into the subsystem to begin with. Coran finally took a deep breath, feeling numb.

“Who… um… who was that?”

Coran swallowed, his throat dry. “That- that was the first Red Paladin. Joitree. Her name… her name was Joitree.” He sank down into one of the console chairs.

“ _ Wha-  _ that shortie was a  _ Paladin?  _ Wow.  _ Wow.  _ I don’t feel like so much of a runt now. So she was a scientist, too?”

"Hah, yes. Very proud of being an inventor. Most of… most of her race was… Spent a lot of time arguing theories and mechanics. It was sort of like their version of politics, I guess. I usually tried to let her handle it. Much...  _ much _ less of a headache that way. She was...”

Pidge edged closer, as if unsure to press him further, but Coran lightly patted his investigation partner on the arm in reassurance. In response, Pidge fidgeted with a pry tool, twirling it back and forth. “If it’s not too invasive, who was Klaka?”

“Oh… heh, oh,  _ that _ . Actually, Klaka was me.” At the questioning look, Coran tugged at his mustache. “Joitree’s name came from a spice, and her favorite spice came from a root that made a dye the same color as my hair. The klaka root. So she started calling me that as a joke after we became amiable, and then all the  _ other  _ Yulnadae started using it, and I was just stuck.”

“Awwww, that’s  _ adorable _ . You’re a ginger root,” Coran had no idea what a ginger root was, but he assumed it meant the same thing, judging by Pidge’s expression. “But… do you want to stop for awhile? I mean, we don’t know what’s in the rest of these. They might hurt you, too.”

Coran leaned back in the chair, just breathing for a moment, then stood up. “No… No, let’s keep going.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” 

A few blips on the screen, more static, and then a familiar deep chuckle that sent a shiver down his spine before the image stuttered together.

"No. Way. Is that- that’s not- that can’t be  _ Zarkon.  _ Is it?”

It could have been. It  _ was _ . So much younger, his face unscarred, his eyes golden instead of malevolent purple. And  _ laughing  _ as he leaned on the table for support _.  _

Coran bit his lip, then pressed his knuckles to his mouth to hide it as he sank deeper into the chair as another figure came into the screen. Tail poking out of her Paladin armor -She’d always hated that an armored tail gave her no freedom of movement, and Green had complied for her- she plopped into a chair beside their former comrade, tossing a datapad carelessly onto the table between them as they both finally got their cackling under control.

They seemed to be in some kind of waiting room. Or office hall. Coran wasn’t sure. Somehow he thought he remembered this, but he couldn’t place it.

“ _ So to make the longest story in investigation history short, there was no ‘secret drug compound’ being synthesized,” _ he said with the most exaggeratedly sarcastic air quotes he could muster, which made her have to muffle more laughter and made Pidge choke.  _ “There is no such thing as yiuichidine. It doesn’t exist.” _

_ “All just a hoax made up to scare the government into getting paranoid over simple foods like yuichi berries. Which didn’t stop idiots from trying to do it themselves, _ ” she added, wiping her eyes.  _ “Wait ‘til you get a load of the footage we shot during the investigation. Which reminds me-”  _ She picked up the datapad again and started tapping a series of complex codes, snickering to herself.

_ “What are you doing? _ ”

_ “Sending that video of the millini water cult ‘blissing out’ on yuichidine crystals to the little goblin. She’s gonna pop a power node laughing.” _

The completely undignified snort the younger Zarkon made at that made Pidge’s mouth drop open. Right as the Galra leader started to speak again though, the video glitched, jittering several times before skipping to another, completely different setting. Coran  _ did  _ recognize the plant-buildings and colorful fountains of Roralla, and his widely smiling face, more excited than Coran had ever seen the Blue Paladin before. Which could only mean-

_ “Hmm, my friend, it is time! Twelve planetary cycles have all been for this, and it has all been worth it! The entire clutch is healthy!” _

The hatching. His chest hurt a little, but Coran smiled, eyes watery. Pidge edged closer, and Coran ruffled short hair in an affirmation that he was still alright. 

_ “Hmm, I have been selected for hatchery duty this year. My clan is so proud of the honor. I will bring the new generation into the world happy and strong. I have been preparing a new watersong for the process! Would you like to experience it?” _

He had then. He did now. Coran started to lean closer to the screen-

-and cursed under his breath when it glitched again, the picture scattering into dozens of picts of color that fluttered and wavered. Static flickered through them, and Pidge frowned, muddling with wires and switches in an attempt to get it to stabilize.

“Here, let me see it,” Coran said, sliding out of the chair to sit down beside his fellow researcher, and together they managed to wheedle the holo back together.

She was dangling Joitree upside down by a foot as the much smaller Paladin swung fists in vain at her. Though they’d managed to get the picture back, there was no sound. Coran didn’t need it, though, to tell that what Joitree was probably spewing wasn’t meant for Pidge’s ears. The Green Paladin, on the other hand, was just grinning as she casually made some one-handed adjustments on a machine before dropping Joitree, who neatly flipped to land on her feet and promptly kicked her in the leg before grabbing a proton wrench to begin working on another part.

Pidge snickered.  “Who’s the tall horse-cat thing in Green’s armor? I forgot to ask during the last one she was in. The whole ‘Zarkon used to have a sense of humor’ thing,  _ holy crap. _ ”

Coran rested his chin in his hands. “Aha, yes, I can imagine that was a bit of a stunner. This was Mirje. She and Joitree picked on each other all the time, even after they became friends, as you heard in the first transmission. But they did some amazing work together. In fact I think I remember this thing,” he added as the two, still soundless, began giving their progress report, indicating various pieces of the machinery to the camera. “If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it refined all the poison out of the air from a planet-wide warzone after Voltron dropped it off. Advanced cleanup and migration efforts a good hundred years.”

“ _ Geez.  _ Think it’s still there for me to look at?”

“Probably not. The Galra likely destroyed it when they started confiscating everything built by their races. Or turned it into a war machine.”

That earned a groan of frustrated disgust and Pidge sank back to rest on elbows with a scowl. 

“Hm… maybe we could still find some of their old work, though. I’m willing to bet the Galra didn’t find  _ all _ of the old Yulnadae labs, as secretive as that lot could be. In fact I’m almost  _ positive  _ they would have never found Joitree’s. She never took Zarkon there, at least not to my knowledge.”

“I’m game-”

_ “Coran.” _

His breath froze in his throat and his head whipped back to the holo screen. While they’d been talking, he hadn’t noticed that it had glitched again. 

And staring back at him was now a much younger Alfor.

Coran found he still couldn’t breathe. His mouth opened, but no words came out, and after a moment of trying to find any, he just closed it again.

_ “No, I’m afrai-/ /-ary week. Ho-/ /-llura holding up? Still terr-/ /-ing the new tutors?” _

“Hey…” Pidge shook him, and Coran finally managed a weak gasp of air. “Should- should I go get Allura?”

Coran wanted to say no. That this wasn’t going to hurt her any less than it was killing him now. But did he have any right to refuse her the chance to see a recorded memory of her father, even if it was just a status conversation between them from a one of a thousand diplomatic missions? 

He didn’t get the chance to decide. Apparently spooked by his wide-eyed silence, Pidge had slipped out of the room by the time he could tear his gaze away from the holo-screen. Coran stared at the closed door for a moment, suddenly feeling very,  _ very  _ alone in the room, and nervously folded his hands together to stop the anxious tremors that had started at the sound of his -friend, partner,  _ love _ \- king’s voice.

_ “I don’t imagine they’ll be too much of a he-/ /-ache, not for you. You always were a natural at dealing with the Kalmakka.” _

Turning back to the holo, he found Alfor regarding him with that fond, wry smile the King always got whenever he bragged on Coran’s abilities. The one he’d inherited from his wife, and had never failed to embarrass Coran when either of them had used it. 

Even now, Coran felt the tips of his ears heat, and couldn’t help a pained little chuckle as his eyes started to tear up.

_ “Yellow’s as anxious as I am to get this sewn up. I think the idea of the coming monsoon season is making her nervous.”  _ There was a roar off-screen and Alfor laughed, a sound that made Coran’s heart clench.  _ “She’s not happy that I’ve been making jokes about her being afraid of water. Ah, but we do hope there aren’t any more delays in the treaty signing. I miss you both.” _ A chime sounded overhead, making Alfor look up and off towards something unseen before scowling and sighing faintly.  _ “And there’s the signal to resume talks. I’ll comm you after the dinner tonight, that way Allura might give the nurses some peace at bathtime. Ailu’cha’tze.” _

“Ailu’cha’tze,” Coran mumbled quietly, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm and not caring when the motion smeared some electrode dust from his gloves on his face in the process. 

He was still trying to get himself back under control, just watching the holo-screen jitter and fritz its way through bits and pieces of other recordings, when the doors behind him switched open again.

“Pidge said it was urgent. That you two had found somethi-  _ oh. _ ”

The holo had come to rest on an image of Zarkon, seated by a window that was half starlight and half forge fires and smelting pits. From the angle of his face, he was holding the recording datapad in his lap.  _ “Coran, old friend, I hope this missive finds you well, and that you will pass its contents on to Alfor.” _

“Hold up. You and  _ Zarkon  _ were  _ friends _ ?” Pidge asked in disbelief, sinking back down to sit amongst the mass of wires and nodes. Allura came to rest her hands on his shoulders and Coran felt her squeeze gently, a touch of reassurance.

“All three of us were, though we met at different times. He met the King first when Alfor was still Crown Prince. They were in the same training group. And then when Zarkon was assigned to a out-colony warband to learn field experience as all Galra do, he was assigned to mine,” Coran explained quietly. Even discounting all the time that he and Allura had been asleep, it all sounded so  _ long  _ ago after everything that had transpired since.

“And then you ended up working for the King and they both became Paladins. Man, Hunk would have fits trying to figure out those odds.”

_ “-to think he’s done so well for himself after the way the sergeants on Delra Nine would mock him. And he has done so well for Thorkelle, as well! He has returned the females to their work in the forges after the last Imperator banned them, and to the spy legions. Productivity is up nearly eighty per cent. He has stopped allowing suppliers to get away with bribery and lower quality materials. And that is only the beginning. I know Mirje always talks about how the happiness of the workers makes for better steel and sharper blades, but to see it in action is something to behold. _

The faraway expression on Zarkon’s face as he raised his head away from the datapad camera and looked out the window was almost as alien as the laughter before, and Coran saw Pidge shiver out of the corner of his eye.

_ “All around me, it seems there are golden ages happening. Altea, Thorkelle, Yulnadae, the Orichians, Rorallia… I only hope I can do half as well when it’s my turn to assume the Guardianship of the Galra Nation _ .”

“Oh, yes, you did  _ such  _ a good job,” Allura muttered bitterly behind him, and Pidge followed it up with a heartfelt boo at the screen. Coran snorted quietly and leaned back in the chair as the holo began skipping through images again. Then he looked up when he felt her rest her arms on his head. 

“Hm?”

“But why  _ did  _ it go so wrong?” she asked softly, dropping her arms down to dangle over his shoulders and laying her cheek on his hair like she used to when she was a kid. “Just… It felt like one day the Galra were our friends, and then Altea was a wasteland, and I don’t think I ever truly got to ask Father about it. He was always so exhausted… so sad. I didn’t want to make it hurt worse.”

Coran gently squeezed one of her hands, and made a subtle motion to Pidge that it was alright to stay in response to a signaled question. “There were some signs of trouble when he took the Guardianship… Renaming it the Sovereignty, for one. But maybe there just weren’t  _ enough _ warning signs. Maybe they were too subtle. Maybe we should have been looking harder.” 

“Maybe you just wanted to trust your friend,” Pidge pointed out.

“That, too.”

“Mm.” Allura straightened, but wouldn’t let go of his hand. “Any way we can get the sound back on this one?” she asked, indicating the holo-screen. 

He and Pidge looked back to find all five of the Paladins in their cockpits, looking ragged and tired. “Looks like it’s up to you, Pidge, I’m being held captive,” Coran joked, which made Allura lightly knock him in the head with their joined hands, but succeeded in earning a small chuckle out of her.

Pidge snorted and grinned, then hunched over to dig into a series of control boards.

_ “-nd kark  _ **_that_ ** _. If any of them turns up alive, I’m going to take their sorry pratchkes apart bone by  _ **_bone_ ** _ ,” _ Mirje was saying in a deep snarl when they got the voices back online.

_ “ _ **_Lan_ ** _ guage, _ ” Zarkon chided, though it was with a rather wicked grin.  _ “What would little Orichian cubs think if they heard their great hero spouting such pro _ **_fane_ ** _ words?” _

_ “Oh, please, as if you haven’t said a thousand times worse. We’ve  _ **_heard_ ** _ those stories.” _

_ “I’m shocked and offended! Alfor, Coran, what scandalous lies have you have been telling about me?” _

_ “Nothing so scandalous as the truth, old friend.  _ **_I’m_ ** _ not the one banned from ever setting foot on Lojor Three again.” _

“Is there a Lojor Three anymore?” Pidge asked, fiddling with a pair of pliers.

“I’m not sure any of us wants to check.”

When the laughter from the holo-screen had died down, Joitree let loose a huge yawn, showing off all her sharp little fangs, then groaned.  _ “Ugh. Red’s nagging to take over piloting, and I’m gonna let her. Kullop’s giving the address come the morning chime, and if I have to listen to that supercilious sack of hot gas pontificate about how great he is for three cycles, I want to at least be well-rested first.” _

_ “I do not envy you in the slightest,”  _ Alfor said with a visible shudder.

_ “Oh, you’ve heard his speeches?” _

_ “I have been in conversation with him.” _

_ “Yeuch. That’s just as bad. Alright, see you losers back at the Castle.” _

After one of the comm windows went black, Allura finally let go of his hand and stepped to the side of the chair, bending down to talk to Pidge. Coran only gave them a passing glance before he turned his attention back to the conversation, though his mind was half on what was being said, and half pondering the very existence of these logs. 

_ “I think it’s probably best we follow suit. None of us are going to be of use to anyone if we’re nothing but warmed over death by the time we arrive.” _

_ “Hmm, I think I agree, if I am understanding your metaphors correctly.” _

_ “Fair enough. Alright, everyone, bunk down and try to get some sleep.” _

Who had saved them? And why? Had Alfor created the pocket subsystem, trying to preserve some memory of happier times for himself? Had the AI done it as a history record for the new Paladins? Had it just been, unlikely as it sounded, an  _ accident _ ?

_ “Coran, you still there?” _

Coran swallowed. Silently, the response came to him, the memory of this conversation welling up in his mind. “Always,” he mouthed, eyes fixed on the last comm screen. 

_ “The Lions are taking over piloting to let us rest.” _

“Noted, sire. They’re in conversation with my navigation computer. Already have a course plotted and your ETA set. I alerted the nurses so they could try to get Allura down for a nap before you arrive. Also, I rearranged your meeting with the delegation from Pulure to tomorrow’s breakfast so you two could have dinner.”

_ “As ever, you’re a wonder. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” _

“Oh, wither and let the castle rot, I suspect.” his heart wasn’t nearly in the joke this time, but in the memory, it made Alfor laugh, and there was a deep staticky rumble across the comm that indicated Yellow found it funny too.

Coran felt his eyes growing wet again and was only barely aware of it when hands squeezed his shoulders once more.

_ “I don’t doubt it. Hold down the fort just a little longer for us, old man. We’ll be home soon.” _


End file.
